The Bruins had secured the match with three singles matches left to play. But, Hoosier coach Jeremy Wurtzman wanted to see the affair through.

So the Bruins obliged – and brought out the brooms.

“The rule is that if both coaches don’t agree upon it, we have to play it out,” said coach Billy Martin. “And their coach really wanted to play it out, which I have to respect.”

UCLA men’s tennis (3-6) swept Indiana (9-3) by a score of 7-0 at the Los Angeles Tennis Center on Friday. Snapping their four-match losing streak, the Bruins won their Big Ten opener – their first victory since Jan. 26.

The pairing of junior Aadarsh Tripathi and redshirt sophomore Emon van Loben Sels made its dual-match debut, defeating Matteo Antonescu and Sam Scherer 6-3. Senior pair and recent Pacific Coast Doubles Championship winners Alexander Hoogmartens and Giacomo Revelli debuted on court one, but their match was left unfinished at 5-4 once the freshmen tandem of Rudy Quan and Kaylan Bigun beat Braedon Gelletich and Karan Raghavendra 6-3 to secure the doubles point.

Hoogmartens was the odd one out as his singles match extended to a third set, with the rest of his team walking away with straight-set wins.

“I’m never a fan of playing these matches out after a team has won the contest. Alex is a great example. He’s wondering, ‘Why the heck am I still out here?’ And I don’t like that. It’s a chance to get injured,” Martin said. “He’s coming off a great performance down on La Jolla in the doubles tournament. I think he would have preferred to have stopped the match after we won it.”

Despite landing three aces in the second set, Hoogmartens dropped the frame to Sam Scherer. But after the two went back and forth in the third, the senior ultimately came out victorious 7-6(3), 3-6, 1-0(7).

Bigun was the first to add a singles point to his team’s scoreboard, besting Jip van Assendelft 6-3, 6-3. No. 37 Quan followed right behind his freshman counterpart, beating Deacon Thomas 6-2, 6-4.

“The match had ups and downs,” Bigun said. “And sometimes I didn’t hold my serve where maybe I could’ve, but I think it was just, again, being present and being mentally strong.”

Van Loben Sels was the last to leave the front courts, sweeping Ben Pomeranets 6-3, 6-2 to clinch the match in UCLA’s favor.

The redshirt sophomore added that the Bruins’ Big Ten opener did little to throw him off his rhythm.

“It’s just another match,” van Loben Sels said. “It’s easy to put emphasis on a match because of something new, but I just went into it like any other day, prepared the same, and it went pretty well today.”

On courts five and six, juniors No. 122 Aadarsh Tripathi and Gianluca Ballotta defeated Braedon Gelletich 6-3, 6-4 and Karan Raghavendra 6-2, 6-2, respectively.

Two former staples of the Bruins’ singles lineup were absent Friday – No. 14 sophomore Spencer Johnson and Revelli.

“Now he’s (Revelli is) really right there knocking on the door to play singles. So that’s just my decision. He’s really ready and in the mind frame of wanting to play singles,” Martin said. “But that’s the next step for him to make and for me to decide to give him that opportunity.”

Meanwhile, Johnson remains sidelined with an undisclosed injury.

UCLA will face Indiana’s in-state rival to the north, Purdue, Sunday at Los Angeles Tennis Center at 11 a.m.

“Hopefully we can just build some good momentum and some good confidence and just bring that into Sunday,” Bigun said.