Lopes drop match against Aggies

Saturday, April 14

Homewood, Ill.

8:00 A.M.

Grand Canyon

New Mexico State

4/14/2018 3:14:00 PM | Men's Tennis

Box Score

By: Jerob Moon

HOMEWOOD, Ill.—The Grand Canyon men's tennis team lost a tough 6-1 match to New Mexico State on Saturday. The Lopes fell to 14-6 and 2-2 in the WAC and the Aggies finished their regular season at 13-7 and 4-1 in conference play. Despite the loss GCU is still in third place in the conference with one final match to go against Chicago State tomorrow.

"Tough match for the guys today," head coach Greg Prudhomme said. "They started off great, they were playing good doubles in all three courts, and New Mexico State started off great and kept the pressure on. Playing indoors it's a little more difficult to change the momentum around, the match goes by pretty quick."

In doubles, GCU and New Mexico State began the match with three close results. The Aggies took the first match defeating Valentin Lang and Gregoire Balenci at court two 6-4. At No. 1, Mathieu Rajaonah and Lorenzo Fucile pushed the match to tiebreakers but the Aggies squeaked out a win and took the doubles point winning 7-6 (7-5). The Lopes won the final doubles match, Lucas Grego and Freddie Grant improved to 4-0 in conference play with a 7-6 (7-4) tiebreaker win.

Despite winning the final doubles match, GCU was unable to keep the momentum in singles. New Mexico State jumped out to a 3-0 lead by quickly taking the first two singles matches, defeating Fucile and Lang at positions two and three. The Lopes answered back however with a straight set win at No. 5 by Grego, who now sits at 3-1 in conference play. The Aggies would go on to win the decisive fourth point by defeating Balenci in straight sets, and then added two more wins at No. 1 and No. 6 to close out the match.

"We got up early on court five and Lucas Grego did a great job finishing the job, and we did have the first set on court six, but other than that New Mexico State got up on us early," Prudhomme added. "They were too tough today, but we are looking forward to having two more weeks to keep working at it, and getting to play in the conference tournament outside in Mesa in a couple of weeks."

GCU will wrap up the regular season against the host school Chicago State (5-16, 0-3). With a win the Lopes would lock up the No. 3 seed in the conference tournament which takes place at the Mesa Tennis Center on April 27-29.