The UTD men’s tennis team defeated a struggling LeTourneau team 8-1 on March 20 in their first ASC match before earning an impressive 5-2 victory against D-II Missouri-St. Louis on March 25. Their March 21 game against Oral Roberts was canceled because of weather.
Against LeTourneau, the Comets won two of their three doubles matches to start the day’s play. The pairs, consisting of Nick Boquet and Benjamin Dubois and Noah Sam and Snehin Yerragudi, came out victorious, but Nathan Qi and Andres Gonzalez lost their match. Boquet and Dubois shut down their opponents in an 8-0 win. The Comets defeated the Yellowjackets in all six singles matches, their second time this season achieving the feat. All but one match were settled in only two sets. Yerragudi and Jed De Luna each won their sets 6-0.
“We’ve been messing around with the [doubles] lineups, and I think right now we’ve got a pretty good tandem with three teams,” De Luna said. “We came out really strong in the singles matchups.”
Against UMSL, the Comets again claimed two of the three doubles matches. Qi and Gonzalez won as well as Boquet and Dubois, but Sam and Yerragudi came up just short, losing 7-6. UTD won four of six singles matches, and Gonzalez, De Luna, Yerragudi and Dubois came out on top. DeLuna recorded his 33rd singles victory, moving to fourth place in the all-time UTD leaderboard.
“I’m hoping to at least get to third or maybe even second on the list,” De Luna said. “The energy and the chemistry is something we’re working on.”
The Comets were coming off a tough loss against Southeastern Oklahoma State before the LeTourneau game, as well as a canceled game versus Saint Mary’s, and had not won a match since Feb. 24. The back-to-back wins against LeTourneau and UMSL helped the team bounce back and build momentum going into the future.
“We all kind of agreed after the match that our level of play is there, it’s just a little bit of discipline,” De Luna said. “Now rolling off a win, we’re always looking to extend that streak.”
The Comets will travel to Arkansas to face Ozarks on March 29 before returning home for games against Howard Payne and SMU on April 4 and April 7 respectively.
“Our goal is to win the conference,” De Luna said. “We really want to see how far we can take this.”