Cunha, Carleton reach ITA final

Reid Carleton and Henrique Cunha finally ran into a doubles team they couldn’t keep up with Sunday morning, as the Duke duo lost in three sets to finish runners-up at the ITA National Indoor Championships hosted by Yale.

“I was really proud we hung in there and kept battling when things weren’t looking good,’ head coach Ramsey Smith said.  “Reid and Henrique showed the resilience they have had all fall. We just came up a little short.”

Carleton, a junior, and Cunha, a freshman, earned a spot in the national competition by winning the ITA Carolina Regional in mid-October, and they made the most of their appearance in New Haven, Conn., over the weekend. In the first round of the 16-team draw, the pair won 8-4, and in the quarterfinals, Duke’s top team defeated a highly ranked pair from USC to advance to the semifinals.

At that stage, the competition changed dramatically. The Blue Devils’ opponents got even better, and every match became longer and more intense: the winning team now needed to take two out of three standard sets instead of just winning one eight-game pro set.

Cunha and Carleton’s opponents in the semifinals, Texas A&M’s Jeff Dadamo and Austin Krajicek, came out firing and won a 6-3 first set. The Blue Devil duo recovered to take the second, and in what Smith called “one of the best efforts I’ve ever seen from a Duke team,” Carleton and Cunha reached the finals with a tiebreaker win in the third set of play.

Duke fought back in the finals just as it had in the previous round, but this time, Carleton and Cunha were beaten. Facing the tournament’s third seed, Stanford’s Bradley Klahn and Ryan Thacher, the Blue Devils fell behind by a set early, but won the second set to set up a championship-deciding third. In those final games, though, the Stanford duo dictated play to earn the 6-2 win.

Carleton and Cunha are the first Duke players to reach the ITA doubles final since 1996. They went 17-3 in the fall season, their first playing together.

“Reid and Henrique have clearly proven they are a top-5 doubles team in the country,” Smith said. “I can’t wait to start the dual match season in January.”