Volunteers upset Bruins in quarterfinals shocker

By Scott Street

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

The NCAA men’s tennis championship was supposed to come
down to the nation’s top two teams: Stanford and UCLA,
co-Pac-10 champions who split their two regular season matches and
hoped to have the rubber match Tuesday decide the national
title.

But someone forgot to tell that to the University of
Tennessee.

The tenth-seeded Volunteers (22-5) upset the second-seeded
Bruins 4-1 in the NCAA quarterfinals at the Dan McGill Tennis
Complex in Athens, Ga. Sunday, erasing any chance for an All-Pac-10
final and ending UCLA head coach Billy Martin’s dreams of
winning his first national championship.

The Bruins (24-4) were upset in Georgia for the second-straight
year. They fell to the host Bulldogs last year as the
tournament’s top seed.

This year Tennessee took advantage of the loss of senior
All-American Brandon Kramer, who fractured his wrist last week
during the NCAA Regionals. Kramer’s doubles partner Jong-Min
Lee, playing with Chris Sands, lost at the No. 2 doubles spot to
Tennessee’s Adam Carey and Mark Parsons.

The win gave the Vols the doubles point, after they split the
first two matches with UCLA. Sands and Lee, who was ranked second
nationally in doubles with Kramer, fought back from a 7-5 deficit
to tie the score at 7-7 before the Volunteers rattled off two
straight games to win, 9-7.

It was the first time the Bruins had not won the doubles point
since they defeated California 6-1 back on April 8.

“I’ve said before that if we win the doubles point
that we are a hard team to beat,” Tennessee head coach
Michael Fancutt said in a statement. “It gives us momentum
and puts us in a great position to win the match, so it really sets
the tone for how we play.”

Tennessee then dominated the start of singles play, winning the
first set in all but one match. Jean-Julien Rojer, who had only
lost two dual matches this year, managed to win only one game from
Tennessee sophomore All-American Peter Handoyo, falling 6-0,
6-1.

The rest of the matches went three sets. UCLA freshman Erfan
Djanghiri was the only Bruin to win a match, defeating Tate Roberts
3-6, 6-1, 6-0 at the No. 5 position. Tennessee pulled ahead 3-1,
however, when Paul Podbury defeated Bruin freshman Lassi Ketola,
6-2, 4-6, 6-3.

The Volunteers then clinched a berth in the semifinals after
Mark Fitzpatrick finished off Sands, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2. The
Bruins’ top two singles players, Grinda and Lee, had their
matches suspended following Fitzpatrick’s win.

“It was a good match,” UCLA head coach Billy Martin
said in a statement. “It was well-fought on both
sides.”

“We had our chances, especially in doubles,” he
added. “We hung in there. We didn’t look good in
singles at first, but we clawed our way back.”

Martin acknowledged that things might have been different had
the Bruins had Kramer, one-half of the Pac-10 doubles team of the
year and the team’s No. 2 singles player.

“The loss of Brandon Kramer hurt us in doubles and in our
depth in singles, but we played a great team,” Martin said.
“Even if we were at full-strength, they could have won. The
better team won.”

Tennessee will now move on to face Virginia Commonwealth
Monday.