USC will share Pac-10 title with Stanford after loss


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UCLA defeated the USC men’s tennis team for the first time this season 4-3, preventing the Trojans from claiming an outright Pac-10 title. The Trojans (19-3, 5-1) will instead share the crown with No. 7 Stanford.

A win would have given USC its first three-match sweep of UCLA (14-6, 4-2) since 1987.

That said, the Pac-10 title isn’t what everything to the team.

“It’s not about the Pac-10, it’s just about beating UCLA,” USC coach Peter Smith said.

“USC isn’t remembered by winning Pac-10 titles. USC is remembered by winning national championships,” senior Robert Farah said.

To begin the match, USC surrendered the doubles point to UCLA.

The No. 5 tandem of Farah and sophomore Steve Johnson comfortably dispatched No. 19 Amit Inbar and Nick Meister 8-5, but USC lost the other two doubles matches in tiebreaking affairs.

UCLA’s Matt Brooklyn and Haythem Abid topped No. 61 sophomore Daniel Nguyen and freshman J.T. Sundling 9-8 (8-6), while Alex Brigham and Holden Seguso defeated USC’s juniors Peter Lucassen and Jaak Poldma 9-8 (7-5).

The Trojans are now 19-0 when winning the doubles point and 0-3 when dropping it this season.

“I feel like the doubles point definitely creates momentum. We had so many chances today to get it, but in the end we didn’t,” Farah said.

In singles play, No. 7 Farah painlessly leveled the match at 1-1 with a 6-1, 6-0 rout over No. 56 Meister. After UCLA struck back when No. 97 Inbar won 6-2, 6-1 over No. 125 Lucassen, USC’s No. 2 Johnson tied the match once again with a 6-2, 6-3 victory against No. 55 Brooklyn.

In the third singles match, No. 52 Abid got out to a quick 1-0 set lead over No. 100 Poldma 6-3. After Abid went up 5-2 in the second set, Poldma struck back to win five games in a row and clinch the third set.

“[Assistant coach Eric] Amend kept me in there and kept telling me the right things, and eventually [Abid] missed a few shots, and I came up with a few big points, so I got the break back,” Poldma said.

Poldma then won three more consecutively games to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the third set, and seemed he would knock off Abid with ease. He then began to suffer from leg cramps that left him limping gingerly between points and forced him to serve underhand. As a result, Abid won the next six games to take the match 6-3, 5-7, 6-3.

“After the cramps, I couldn’t serve and I couldn’t run, so it limited my arsenal quite a bit,” Poldma said.

One of the bright spots for USC in singles play was No. 88 Nguyen, who topped UCLA’s Seguso 6-3, 1-6, 6-4 in a rocky affair. The win extended Nguyen’s singles-match win streak to 12 and evened the match at 3-3.

In the deciding match, UCLA’s Maxime Tabatruong won the first set over senior Jason McNaughton 6-3. But McNaughton fought back in a tiebreaker to win the second set 7-6 (7-5). McNaughton went up 4-1 in the third set, but Tabatruong countered to win the final five games to seal the 4-3 overall victory for UCLA.

Despite the loss, team members saw the match as beneficial to the team as it enters postseason play.

“We’re a better team having lost to UCLA than not having played the match,” Smith said. “It hurts to lose, but we found out some information about our team, and we will be better for it at the NCAAs,” Nguyen agreed, saying, “This is just a stepping stone for our further success; it’s a good learning experience.”

The USC men’s tennis team will play next weekend at the Pac-10 championships in Ojai, Calif.