It was an up-and-down weekend for the UNM men’s tennis team.
The Lobos opened the weekend with a 6-1 win over No. 57 Middle Tennessee State on Friday before falling 4-3 to No. 63 Denver on Sunday at the UNM Tennis Complex.
UNM is now 2-3 for the season.
Head coach Alan Dils said he was proud of his team’s effort.
“We knew we were playing two tough teams,” he said. “We would have liked to win both. But I was proud of the way our team competed. We fought hard, and I’m happy with that.”
On Friday, the Lobos came out on fire and captured the doubles point with wins at the No. 2 and No. 3 positions. Then, UNM won five of six singles matches to clinch the match.
Unfortunately, the momentum didn’t carry over to Sunday’s match.
“We came out flat in doubles and didn’t play as well as we could have,” Dils said. “In doubles, you have to be the aggressor. You have to look to put the ball away, and I felt like we were waiting for them to make the first move.”
UNM dropped all three doubles matches to fall behind 0-1.
“It is really difficult to come back from losing all three doubles matches,” said junior Joe Wood. “I think we did a good job mentally of refreshing our minds and going at our singles matches.”
Freshman Jadon Phillips was a 6-3, 6-3 winner over Denver’s Fabio Biasion at the No. 3 singles spot to tie the match at 1-1.
“I came out with a lot of confidence and stuck to my game plan,” Phillips said after his match. “It’s a little nerve-wracking, because I knew the match was on the line, and I knew it was close.”
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Denver picked up two more wins to take the lead, 1-3. Then, with the match on the line, Wood rallied back to defeat Denver’s Jens Vorkefeld 4-6, 6-0, 7-5 at the No. 5 position.
“I started off kind of slow,” Wood said of his win. “I just started focusing on every point, and everything started turning around for me.”
Denver’s Yannick Weihs clinched the match with a three-set win over UNM’s Carl Ho at the No. 1 position. Lobo sophomore Ben Dunbar was a 5-7, 6-3, 2-2 winner over Denver’s David Simon due to retiring after the match was decided.
Dils said the close outcome was indicative of things to come for the Lobos.
“This match is great preparation for our conference schedule when every match will be this close,” he said. “Denver is a team that we’ve played before and created a pretty good rivalry with. They are undefeated and will beat some good teams down the road.”
Up next, the Lobos take on Abilene Christian at home on Sunday.
“I’m happy with where we’re at right now,” Dils said. “We can take a lot of positives away and turn this around for the rest of the season.”
*Men’s tennis vs. Abilene Christian
Sunday, 2 p.m.
UNM Tennis Complex *
