PASADENA, Calif. – For the second time this season the University of Redlands Men's Tennis team dropped a highly contested match-up 5-4 with the Beavers of the California Institute of Technology.
This time around the Bulldogs would fall in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) Tournament Semi-Finals to the No. 2 seed, a match that went late into the night in Pasadena.
Redlands put together a fight in the evening match-up grabbing a doubles point before splitting singles action. CIT grabbed the first point at No. 3 as the first-year duo of Tyler Pyle (Lake Oswego, OR) and Michael Dudley (Baton Rouge, LA) would fall 8-5. The Maroon and Grey would level the match thanks to Nils Plutat (Sauerlach, Bavaria, Germany) and Bryce Keim (Spartanburg, S.C.), the No. 1 team in the West Region who continues their amazing season as they cruised 8-4 at the top spot. It then came down to the No. 2 team of Stefan Hester (Rancho Palos Verdes, CA) and Jack Mattox (Mercer Island, WA) who would force a breaker, but couldn't give UR the advantage as they would fall 8-7 (3).
Despite being down the Bulldogs did not go away quietly. CIT picked up a quick point at No. 6 extending their lead to 3-1 as first-year Omar Khayat (Irvine, CA) would fall in straights 6-1, 6-1. Plutat came back to make it a one point margin with a win at No. 1 edging Kyle McCandless 7-6 (4), 6-4. Keim put the U of R on top with a win at No. 3 also needing a breaker as he would pull off a 6-3, 7-6 (8) decision, moving the score to 3-3. Caltech grabbed that point right back coming at No. 2, but it would go the distance as Hester would fight back from a set down only to fall 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 to Ishaan Kannan.
Donovan Lilov (San Diego, CA) would come up with the equalizer at No. 5, who also needed to come from a set down against Victor Li. He dropped the first set 7-5 but managed to grind his way to the win taking the second set 6-4 and eventually the third 6-1 forcing the decision to come down to Mattox at No. 4.
Mattox found himself in an early hole after dropping the opening set 6-4 to Daniel Wen. But somehow he would find a second gear pulling out a breaker in the second set 7-6 (5) forcing a third. Mattox got down a break midway through, but battled back to force a tiebreaker, which he was unable to gain a footing in as he would fall 7-6 (2).
Redlands ends their season 10-8, 5-2 SCIAC. They have a chance to make the NCAA Division III National Championships, but it would have to be as an At-Large.
