Throughout three consecutive days of playing some of the nation's top teams, the No. 11 Blue Devils had their share of disappointment and success at the prestigious National Team Indoor Championships in Chicago.
In its opening round contest Friday, Duke (4-3) started strongly against No. 5 Baylor (8-2), as David Goulet and Joey Atas won their doubles match. Duke lost the doubles point, however, after Peter Rodrigues and Dylan Arnould fell in a tiebreak.
The team came out strong in singles play against the highly-touted Bears, taking the first set in four of the six matches played. Baylor, though, was too powerful in the end, and pulled away in the remaining sets to advance with a score of 4-0.
The Blue Devils then entered the consolation bracket, where they were paired with No. 28 Stanford (0-5) for the eighth meeting in the history of the schools. Despite once again going down in doubles play, Duke's talented senior Rodrigues was able to win his match as the No. 2 seed, and the 4-2 team victory was sealed at the lower seeds by freshmen Arnould and Aaron Carpenter.
"We had a tough loss [to Baylor] and I thought that the guys did a good job of coming back from that in [Saturday's] match," head coach Jay Lapidus said. "We did a great job in singles and it came down to two freshmen, [Arnould] and [Carpenter], and they did a great job of coming through for us."
The Blue Devils were scheduled to face yet another top-15 opponent-No. 14 Oklahoma State-Sunday night. The match with the Cowboys, who lost to No. 6 Illinois Friday and beat Miami Saturday, ended after press time.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.