NORFOLK, Va. – The BYU men’s tennis team fell 4-1 to Old Dominion on Tuesday afternoon at the Ted Constant Center.
"We owed Old Dominion a return visit," BYU head coach Brad Pearce said. "We need to play the best teams in order to get ourselves better, so no excuses; we just need to keep working and getting better. We'll regroup and be ready to go against Harvard on Friday."
With only one doubles win, the Cougars (1-2) came up short on the doubles point, putting the Monarchs (3-0) up 1-0 going into singles competition.
Ben Gajardo and Sam Tullis were first to finish and claimed the only doubles victory for BYU when they topped Luca Maldoner and Tomislav Podvinski 6-4 at the No. 2 spot.
Matheus Ferreira Leite and Jack Barnett fell 4-6 at the No. 3 slot to Nicola Vidal and Younes Lalami while at first singles, Sean Hill and Mateo Vereau Melendez kept up with Francois Musitelli and Jannik Giesse but came up short 6-7 in the tiebreaker game.
Going into singles, Old Dominion won the second point of the dual match when Barnett dropped his match at No. 4 singles 2-6, 5-7 to Podvinski.
Gajardo earned the only point for the Cougars when he defeated Vidal 6-0, 7-5 at the fifth slot.
The Monarchs went on to claim the next two matches to win the dual match 4-1.
After bringing it to 6-6 in the second set, Leite fell 2-6, 6-7 to Giesse. Melendez took Musitelli to three sets after winning set two, but he lost in the third set, 2-6, 6-4, 4-6 in the second spot.
The Cougars remain on the road this week to face Harvard and Minnesota on Jan. 24, at 12 p.m. EST, and Jan. 25, at 11 a.m. EST, respectively.
Additional Quotes from Coach Pearce
"Old Dominion was nationally ranked last season and returned almost their entire team, so we knew it would be a tough match on their home courts. We had a match point on one court to win the doubles point and were up a break at the other position, but didn't take care of it. That was a tough break. I thought our heads were right after losing the doubles point, and everyone came out ready to go for singles play, but we couldn't generate enough momentum at enough positions to claw our way back into the match."