On Friday morning, the Texas A&M men’s tennis team fell to the South Carolina Gamecocks 4-2 in the quarterfinal round of the SEC Tournament at the Alfred E. Ring Tennis Complex in Gainesville, Florida.
The match, which was originally scheduled for 8 a. m., was forced to start an hour early due to inclement weather conditions. After the match, Texas A&M head coach Steve Denton told 12thman.com that South Carolina was better prepared to manage the tough conditions.
“I thought that South Carolina was better prepared today to handle the tough conditions and that is on me,” Texas A&M head coach Steve Denton told 12thman.com. “They won the important points on a few key courts. We need to use this time to get better in several areas for each player and that is what we will focus on.
In doubles competition, the Aggies were able to strike first on South Carolina with the duo team of Hady Habib and Pranav Kumar winning 6-3 over SC’s duo of Beau Pelletier and Jake Beasley. The Gamecocks quickly responded on court 2, with Paul Jubb and Yancy Dennis defeating Valentin Vacherot and Noah Schachter 6-2. With the score tied up, South Carolina pushed ahead of A&M, as SC’s Daniel Rodriguez and Raphael Lambling defeated the No. 7 duo of Carlos Aguilar and Barnaby Smith to clinch the double point for South Carolina.
Down 1-0 after doubles competition, A&M rebounded to take the lead from South Carolina early in singles competition. Freshman Noah Schachter evened the score for the Aggies after defeating SC’s Thomas Brown 6-1, 7-5. With the score tied, sophomore Barnaby Smith put A&M in the lead with his own victory, defeating Pelletier 6-2, 7-5.
After going up 2-1, A&M failed to capitalize in the rest of the match, conceding the next three points to South Carolina. SC’s Paul Jubb, the no. 6 ranked player in the nation, defeated Aguilar 1-6, 6-0, 6-3 to tie the match up at 2-2. SC’s Rodrigues followed that up by defeating Habib 6-3, 2-6, 6-0 putting the Gamecocks within one point of victory. On court three, Raphael Lambling’s 6-3, 7-6(5) win over Valentin Vacherot clinched the match for South Carolina.
With the loss, the No. 11 Aggies (20-7) will not to advance to the semi-final round of the SEC Tournament for the first time since joining the SEC in 2012. South Carolina faces off against Mississippi State tomorrow, April 20th at 11 a.m.