Lopes Fall Short in Close Contest Against UTPA

Friday, March 27

Edinburg, TX

3:30 p.m.

Grand Canyon

Texas-Pan American

Adrian Legarreta

Photo by: Darryl Webb

3/27/2015 9:29:00 PM | Men's Tennis

Legarreta Earns 12th Consecutive Victory

In their first conference match of the season, the Grand Canyon University men's tennis team (8-8) came up short in a close 4-3 match against Texas-Pan American (5-9) at the Orville Cox Tennis Center in Edinburg, Tex.

Philip Kuehnen and Adrian Legarreta clinched the doubles point for the Lopes on court one, to earn the team's first point of the day. On court three, Meidy Chazeau and Gregoire Balenci picked up the second doubles victory.

"The guys lost a real hard-fought match tonight against Texas-Pan American," said head coach Greg Prudhomme. "They did a great job fending off the energy from the home crowd at the beginning of the doubles and getting it to swing our way by winning the deciding point on court one to get the doubles point."

"They also did a good job fending off that energy again in the singles, Prudhomme explained. "We got down on most of the courts early, but slowly but surely we were fighting our way back into the match."

In singles, Legarreta triumphed on in a tough three-set match against Koby Jansen for his twelfth consecutive victory. After losing the opening set, he came back to win the second set in a tiebreaker. He won the final set 6-4.

Kuehnen also won his match, winning the opening set in a tiebreaker before snagging the win 6-4.

Balenci and Felix Schueller came up short in a pair of tight three-set matches.

"We have to give a lot of credit to the other team for the fight they put up on all six courts, but I'm also real proud of our guys for the effort that they left out there," Prudhomme concluded. "There wasn't much that I could fault them for, losing the close 4-3 match because there wasn't anything easy about it from the first point to the last point. We're just going to keep building off of that, get some experience, and learn from it."

Grand Canyon will continue their stint in Edinburg, Tex., with another conference match against Chicago State at 10 a.m. A full recap will be available at www.gculopes.com.

UTPA 4, GCU 3