Lopes win 2, play in final

Saturday, March 3

Albuquerque, N.M.

4:30 P.M.

Grand Canyon

Brown

Photo by: Travis Neely

3/4/2018 12:29:00 AM | Men's Tennis

Box Score 1 Box Score 2

By: Jerob Moon

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M—Grand Canyon tennis won both their opening matches in the Mountain Pacific Invitational and advanced to the championship match on Sunday. The Lopes defeated Lamar 4-0 and Brown 4-2 and will face Wichita State on Sunday at 11:30 A.M. (MST).

Match 1
The Lopes got off to a hot start in this year's tournament sweeping Lamar in convincing fashion. Because all teams played in a doubleheader, singles were played first and if needed doubles would be played second. Singles play was all GCU needed to get the win against the Cardinals.

GCU won the first set in four of the six matches, but faced some adversity in the second sets. Justin Cvitanovic was dominant at No. 6 winning every game 6-0, 6-0. Valentin Lang, Lucas Grego, and Gregoire Balenci all were down early in their second sets, but battled back to get the win. Grego and Balenci each won the second set 6-4 and Valentin Lang won in tiebreakers to give the Lopes the team win.

Both Mathieu Rajaonah and Lorenzo Fucile were stopped in the middle of their matches because of GCU getting the fourth team point.

Match 2
GCU punched their ticket to the championship round with a 4-2 defeat against Brown (11-3). Tomorrow the Lopes will take on Wichita State (5-5) who have won four in a row. The Shockers shut out San Francisco 4-0 in the first round and then defeated No. 46 New Mexico in the semifinal 4-1.

"This match was tougher than the scores show, it didn't go to the doubles but Brown was super tough," coach Prudhomme said. "Even in our straight set wins, we were again fighting in the second sets. We had really strong performances even in the two matches we lost. The guys showed great mental toughness and team spirit to beat a team that has already won matches in close situations."

For the second straight match the Lopes only needed to singles to get to four points, this time however they were tested with four of the six singles matches going to a third set. Grego and Lang won the first two matches of the day in straight set victories and gave the Lopes an early 2-0 lead.

GCU pushed it to 3-0 after a three set Gregoire Balenci win at No.4, but Brown responded with two wins at No.1 and No.2 over Rajaonah and Fucile. With GCU holding onto a 3-2 lead, the Lopes had to win the last singles match or Brown would force doubles play. Cvitanovic at No. 6 was in the last match of the night, he won the first set in tiebreakers 7-6 but faltered in the second set losing 3-6. Heading into the final set, Cvitanovic fell behind early and faced a match point being down 5-3 and 40-0. In total he had to face eight match points in the final set, and pulled out a win in tiebreakers winning 7-6 (13).

The Lopes will compete in the championship match for their first time since they began competing in the tournament four seasons ago. The Shockers already faced a WAC team this season, they defeated UMKC 7-0 on Feb. 18.