Box Score GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- In a wild, back-and-forth affair, the University of North Dakota men's tennis team came out on top, 5-2, over Creighton on Friday night from Choice Health and Fitness in Grand Forks, N.D.
UND (6-0) opened up its home portion of the schedule with its sixth straight win to stay unbeaten on the season and earn the program's first victory over Creighton in program history, extending the best start in North Dakota's Division I history.
"These types of matches are like mirrors," said UND head men's tennis coach Tom Boysen. "They reveal who you really are as players and as teams. You can't hide; you can't fake it. We faced our first true deficit of the season today, our first true adversity and our first chance to either doubt ourselves or believe in ourselves."
Once again, it was doubles play that got the Fighting Hawks rolling, capturing the 1-0 lead for the sixth straight match. The top pair of
Nikita Snezhko and
Gerhard Sullwald remained perfect on the season with a 6-2 victory before
Cian McDonnell and
Edmond Aynedjian clinched the early advantage for the hosts with a similar 6-2 win at the No. 2 spot.
Sullwald kept his strong play rolling with another singles win, improving to 6-0 on the season with a 6-3, 6-2 triumph at the No. 1 spot to extend the UND lead to 2-0; however, Creighton answered back with two wins on the bottom courts to even the match up at 2-2.
The Bluejays captured opening set victories on each of the remaining three courts, but UND started to chip away and take control of the matches. McDonnell dropped his first frame by a 6-4 score before pulling even with a 6-3 victory and restoring the NoDak lead at 3-2 by a 7-5 triumph at the No. 2 position.
Leading by a match, UND saw Creighton nearly storm back and steal the match, with Snezhko and Aynedjian both falling by 6-3 scores in the first set and seeing the visitors get to match point, but the pair both rallied to claim the second frame, 7-6, to force a tiebreaker. It was the Iowa transfer who clinched the victory with another 7-6 win in the third set and Aynedjian followed suit with a 7-5 victory of his own in the tiebreaker to hold off the charge from the Bluejays and cement the 5-2 victory.
"For sure there were some bad moments, some indecision, some poor choices and some poor reactions, but in the end, we showed some real resilience, toughness, togetherness and fierce determination," said Boysen. "Coming back from losing five of the six first sets in singles is extremely difficult to do. Hats off to Cian, Edmond and Nikita for getting their matches into third sets and eventually winning them."
Boysen continued.
"I told them that this win was much less about forehands, backhands and serves than it was about fighting, competing, digging deep and believing in ourselves and each other. I could sense that they just didn't want to let this opportunity go wasted."
North Dakota looks to make it a 7-0 start against Gustavus Adolphus on Sunday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. from Choice Health and Fitness.
