It wasn’t pretty, but Duke men’s tennis will take it.
The eighth-seeded Blue Devils (5-1) defeated No. 10 seed LSU (7-1), 4-2, at the ITA National Team Indoor Championship in Chicago Thursday. Duke came out victorious despite its top three players losing their respective individual matches. The win places the Blue Devils in the quarterfinals for the eighth straight year, the longest current streak in the nation.
Though Duke held the lead for the entire matchup, it faced a challenge throughout the afternoon. The Blue Devils’ top doubles pair of junior Ludovic Walter and senior Jason Zimmerman went down, but the two other Duke doubles teams beat their LSU counterparts to give Duke the overall doubles advantage. Senior Peter Shults, sophomore Peter Rodrigues and freshman Charles Brezac each won individual matches to secure the victory for Duke.
It was this depth that led Duke to its first victory of the tournament, junior Jonathan Stokke said.
Last year the Blue Devils fell to top-ranked Illinois in the quarterfinals of the ITA Championship.
“In my mind, that’s what separates us from some of the other teams,” Stokke said. “Everyone here has really talented one, two and three guys, but we have a lot of depth. We felt like our four, five and six were better and we had an advantage there. It’s really a testament to those guys that they came out and really took care of business today.”
Walter, Duke’s top player and No. 6 in the nation, lost his first match of the season to the Tigers’ top player, No. 12 Ken Skupski. Walter must now bounce back in a challenge against Baylor’s Lars Poerschke, ranked 11th in the nation.
Duke looked like it would secure an easy victory early in the singles matches. Having already secured the doubles team point and with only three individual victories necessary for the win, the Blue Devils led five of the six matches after the first set. LSU, however, tied up three of those five matches, and it took Rodrigues’ 6-4 third set to close out the Tigers.
“Our guys fought well,” Duke head coach Jay Lapidus said. “We won five first sets, and I thought we had it in the bag, but it got pretty tight. LSU did a good job coming back—both teams did.”
For the second year in a row, the Blue Devils face the top-seeded team of the tournament in the quarterfinals. The team will take on Baylor Friday afternoon at 3 p.m..
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