POCATELLO, Idaho (April 8, 2023) - The No. 61-ranked Northern Arizona Men's Tennis continued its hot season by winning its 10th straight match and remaining unbeaten in Big Sky play by defeating the Idaho State Bengals on the road, 4-3.
The Lumberjacks increased their head-to-head winning streak with the Bengals to 10 in its first match in Pocatello since 2018. The 4-3 victory for Northern Arizona matches its win against Idaho State in last year's regular-season finale in Flagstaff.
The teams split the singles matches by winning three apiece, but Northern Arizona got the job done by taking the doubles points as it has done regularly all season.
The Court 1 duo of freshman Maikel De Boes and graduate Facundo Tumosa made quick work of junior Andreas Kramer and freshman Valentino De Pellegrin, 6-1 to improve their doubles to 7-1 as a team.
The Lumberjacks secured the doubles point on Court 2 in a highly contested battle between NAU's duo of sophomore Piotr Galus and senior Alex Groves and ISU's duo of sophomore Victor Sklenka and junior Hiroki Fujita. Northern Arizona needed an extra game, but secured the win, 7-5, leaving Court 3 unfinished.
De Pellegrin avenged his doubles loss by winning his singles match against De Boes on Court 1, 6-4, 6-4. Kramer did the same thing in his rematch with Galus in a similar fashion, 6-4, 6-3. Kramer handed Galus only his third singles loss of the season, the sophomore from Szczecin, Poland still leads the Lumberjacks with 16 wins.
Northern Arizona dominated the middle courts to take the overall win, securing victories on Courts 3, 4 and 5.
Tumosa recovered from a loss in the first set to pull off the reverse sweep against Sklenka and was victorious in the match-deciding tiebreaker in the third set to win, 2-6, 6-1, 7-6.
Junior Dominik Buzonics had an easy time on Court 4 against junior Wikus Robbertse, both fresh from not competing in doubles play. Buzonics improves to 13-2 and a perfect 4-0 in conference with his straight-set win, 6-2, 6-3.
Groves continued the trend of near-identical finishes by improving to 5-0 in conference play by defeating Fujita on Court 5 with ease by looking even stronger as the match went on as he won, 6-3, 6-0. Groves has now beaten Fujita head-to-head each of the last two seasons, having won 6-2, 6-1 in Flagstaff also on Court 5 almost 12 months ago.
In the closest match of them all, junior Maciej Ziomber put his 10-1 overall record and 4-0 Big Sky record on the line against junior Ege Cankus. In yet another rematch from last season's match-up, Cankus avenged a straight-set loss by taking Ziomber down to the wire in a third-set tiebreaker 10-8 after dropping the first set.
Northern Arizona (18-2, 5-0 Big Sky) has already played its final match of the Big Sky season outside of Arizona. The Lumberjacks will return to Flagstaff after its short road trip to host the Montana Grizzlies (10-9, 2-4 Big Sky) on Friday, April 14 at 10 a.m. MST at the Wall Aquatic Center. The Lumberjacks will then wrap up the regular season the following day at the same time against the Weber State Wildcats (11-7, 4-0 Big Sky).
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