By Foster Nicholas | Sports Writer
No. 5 seed Baylor men’s tennis was outmatched by No. 4 seed University of Oklahoma, 4-3, in the first round of the Big 12 Conference Championships Friday afternoon at the Jayhawk Tennis Center at Rock Chalk Park in Lawrence, Kan.
Head coach Michael Woodson and the Bears (17-15) matched up with the Sooners (13-10) a week after losing a 4-0 contest to them in Norman, Okla., and they came up just short in changing the outcome.
The green and gold opened the morning strong by securing the doubles point. No. 16 doubles team junior Tadeas Paroulek and freshman Zsomber Velcz concluded their match on court one with a 6-4 win. Soon after, junior Christopher Frantzen and freshman Luc Koenig cruised to a 6-1 win on court three.
The No. 30 senior duo of Finn Bass and Juan Pablo Grassi Mazzuchi had their court two match left unfinished at 4-4.
“I don’t think we could’ve asked for a better start,” Woodson said. “We were able to do everything we wanted to do in doubles and corrected some things that got us off to a wrong start against OU last time. Chris [Frantzen] and Luc [Koenig] did a great job. They got the momentum swinging our way. The guys also did a great job of taking the doubles point into singles.”
The Bears moved into singles with momentum and took the first set on five of the six courts. On court six, Koening quickly extended the overall Baylor lead to 2-0 after taking back-to-back sets, 6-2, 6-2.
OU snagged the next point as No. 94 Sooner senior Alex Martinez took care of No. 62 Paroulek on court one, 6-3, 6-4. After the fight on court one, sophomore Marko Miladinović couldn’t bounce back on court four, falling 6-3, 0-6, 1-6, and the match evened at two points apiece.
Baylor retook the lead when Mazzuchi won the tiebreaker in his second set, 6-4, 7(7)-6(5). The green and gold were still locked into battles on two courts and only needed one point for the victory.
Velcz was locked in a crazy tiebreaker in his first set on court two, and after a back-and-forth battle, he took the tiebreaker 7(16)-6(14). Unfortunately, the final two sets didn’t fall in his favor, and the Bears lost the point, 0-6, 2-6.
With a 3-3 tally, it all came down to No. 82 Bass on court three. He took the first set 7-5 but dropped the second set by the same mark. In the final set of the afternoon, Bass battled hard but came up short, 2-6.
“Taking five of the first six sets was impressive against a team like OU,” Woodson said. “It was a tough one, but a good learning experience by our young guys and highlighted by some really strong play from Luc and some of our young guys. It will be exciting to see where we get to go to NCAAs and we’ll look forward to that now.”
After dropping the match 4-3, Baylor will now wait anxiously to hear if it will be headed to the NCAA Tournament. The selection show begins at 5:30 p.m. on May 1 on NCAA.com. The first round will begin on campus sites on May 5.
