No. 60 Men's Tennis Falls to USF, 5-2

CORAL GABLES, Fla. – In its second dual match of the weekend, the Miami Hurricanes men’s tennis team fell 5-2 to USF on Sunday at the Neil Schiff Tennis Center.

“It was a really exciting match, the ultimate of college tennis where you play for several hours and it comes down to the very end,” assistant coach Mark Dickson said. 

The Bulls opened the afternoon by winning the doubles point. Miami’s doubles teams – Gabriel Flores and Diego Soto; and Omar Aly and Danny Shebshayevich were caught up in back-and-forth matches. Flores and Soto eventually fell to Roberto Cid and Sasha Gozun 6-4. Aly and Shebshayevich did not finish their match against Paul Polarczyk and Vadym Kalyuzhnyy, but the Canes duo was leading 5-4 when USF secured the doubles point.

Miami’s William Albanese and Henrique Tsukamoto lost their match against USF’s Oliver Pramming and Ignacio Gonzalez 6-0.

Three singles matches went three sets, including two that required tiebreakers.

Tsukamoto played an impressive two sets and won his match against Ignacio Gonzalez 6-1, 6-4. Soto shut out Finn Meinecke in the first set and lead throughout the second set to win the match 6-0, 6-2. Bernard Tefel fell to Vadym Kalyuzhnyy in his singles match 1-6, 4-6, but Tefel showed strong efforts in his second set ending.

“Almost four hours were played and we still had three matches left on three courts. We had really good chances on each one of them,” head coach Mario Rincon said. “Our guys competed really hard the entire day.”

After forcing two tiebreakers, Albanese lost his match against Sasha Gozun 3-6, 5-6 (4-7), 5-6 (4-7).  Aly and Flores were also forced into third sets. Aly fell to Oliver Pramming 5-6 (4-7), 6-3, 1-6. Flores lost to Roberto Cid 3-6, 6-4, 2-6.

Miami returns to action Feb. 22 for a 2 p.m. home match against the North Florida Ospreys.

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