Virginia Men's Tennis Beats Kentucky in Thriller, Advances to NCAA Semifinals

An epic rivalry is forming between the men's tennis programs of Virginia and Kentucky. Last year, the Cavaliers swept the Wildcats in the NCAA Finals to capture their fifth national title. Then, Kentucky came back this season and handed UVA its first loss of the year in a 4-3 thriller back on February 3rd in Charlottesville. A little over three months later, these two powerhouse programs clashed again, this time in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Men's Tennis Championship.

In another exhilarating chapter of the rivalry and a match that required two days to complete, No. 5 seed Virginia outlasted No. 4 seed Kentucky 4-2 on Friday at the USTA National Campus in Orlando to advance to the semifinals of the 2023 NCAA Men's Tennis Championship.

The match originally began at 5pm on Thursday, but was suspended due to heavy rainfall shortly after the start of singles action. Thursday's portion of the match saw Kentucky grab a 1-0 lead from securing the doubles point. After the Cavaliers and Wildcats split on courts 2 and 3, Kentucky's team of Alafia Ayeni and Taha Baadi defeated UVA's Inaki Montes and William Woodall via 7-6 tiebreaker to clinch the doubles point.

Singles play began briefly on Thursday, but was then suspended due to the rain, and the match resumed on Friday at 10am. The Cavaliers seized momentum in singles, as Alexander Kiefer earned a 6-4, 6-3 win over Jaden Weekes on court 5 and Chris Rodesch took down Liam Draxl 6-4, 6-3 on the top court to put UVA in front. Ryan Goetz added a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Taha Baadi on court 4 and suddenly, the Hoos were within one point of securing the win with a 3-1 lead.

The Wildcats wouldn't go away easily, putting up a tremendous fight on each of the three remaining courts. Alafia Ayeni won the first set against Inaki Montes 7-6 and then Montes responded with a 6-1 win in set 2 to force a deciding third set. Ayeni won that final set 6-3 to make the match score 3-2.

The matches on courts 3 and 6 paralleled each other in terms of competition and duration. On court 3, Jeffrey von der Schulenburg won the first set against Joshua Lapadat 7-5, but then lost the second set 6-4. Lapadat went up a couple of games in the third set, but von der Schulenburg fought back to pull even with Lapadat at 5-5.

Meanwhile, UVA freshman Mans Dahlberg bounced back on court 6 after losing the first set to Charlelie Cosnet 6-3, evening the match at one set apiece with a 6-4 win in set 2. The third set went to a tiebreaker, with Dahlberg showing incredible composure in the moment as a freshman, winning the tiebreaker 7-3 to secure a 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 win and clinching the match for the Cavaliers.

On court 3, Jeffrey von der Schulenburg had fallen behind in the third set 6-5, but was ahead 30-15 in his service game to force a tiebreaker when Dahlberg ended the match.

The victory, which was UVA's 20th-consecutive win, propels the defending national champions into the NCAA semifinals and in order to defend their title, the Cavaliers will fittingly have to beat the best team in the nation. No. 5 seed Virginia will face the No. 1 overall seed Texas in the semifinals on Saturday at 12pm.

To stay up to date on all Virginia Cavaliers sports news, follow CavaliersNow on social media:

Facebook: @CavaliersNow
Twitter: @CavaliersNowFN