The Texas A&M men’s tennis team had a weekend of mixed emotions on their midwest road trip as they defeated No. 49 Notre Dame on Friday, and then lost a heated match to No. 1 Illinois on Saturday.
The No. 9 Aggies started the weekend on a high note with their 5-2 victory over the Irish. A&M was led by juniors Lester Cook and Ante Matijevic, the nation’s top-ranked doubles team. The duo beat the No. 18-ranked doubles team of Luis Haddock and Ryan Keckley, 8-6. Each then went on to win their respective singles matches in straight sets.
Senior transfer Mohamed Dakki clinched the overall match by defeating Notre Dame’s Brent D’Amico, 7-5, 6-4.
A&M then suffered its first loss of the season, falling to top-ranked Illinois, 4-3. The Illini were able to secure the doubles point as Cook and Matijevic were the only Aggies to win a doubles match. Then all Illinois needed was a split in the singles matches to gain its 34th straight victory.
Despite the loss, A&M coach Tim Cass was still pleased with his team’s performance.
“Overall, I’m proud of the effort,” Cass said. “Illinois is an extremely deep team, and we like to think we are deep, too. They just got us.”
The Aggies will try to rebound this Saturday as they travel to Durham, N.C., to take on No. 8 Duke.
“The battle in the bayou” weekend proved to be not much of a battle at all for the Texas A&M men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams. Both squads pulled off easy road victories against Louisiana State University and Louisiana-Monroe.
The LSU (2-6) men presented what seemed to be the biggest challenge of the weekend, winning the first four events of the meet. The No. 14 Aggies (7-1) soon distanced themselves, winning all the remaining events but one. Not to be outdone, the No. 14 Aggie women (8-1) dropped only five events in the meet.
Louisiana-Monroe (6-6) provided not much of a bigger challenge, with both squads winning. The Aggie women fared well in the meet, winning 11 of 16 events, including sweeping both the backstroke and breaststroke events. On the men’s side, senior Alfredo Jacobo extended his win streak to seven-straight breaststroke events, a career best.
The Aggie men take to the pool this Saturday in a meet against Southern Methodist University in Dallas while the Aggie women have the weekend off.