Feb. 26, 2016
#BoilerNotes
- Purdue lost the doubles point for just the fourth time this season… the Boilermakers are now 2-2 when surrendering the point.
- Friday's match was the Boilermakers' first of the season that pitted two ranked teams against each other … Drake is the third ranked team they have faced in 2016.
DES MOINES, Iowa ââ'¬" No. 44 Drake snapped Purdue's eight-dual match winning streak in a 5-2 upset of the 39th-ranked Boilermakers on Friday at the Roger Knapp Tennis Center. The Bulldogs (6-5) captured the doubles point and the bottom half of their singles lineup powered them to the victory. It was just the second loss of the season and the first on the road for the men's tennis team as their record moved to 10-2.
After Drake's No. 1 doubles team of Ben Lott and Ben Wood notched a 6-3 decision over Ricky Medinilla and Dominik Sochurek, the battle was on for the point.
Purdue's Gergely Madarasz and Benjamin Ugarte rallied from a slow start to take a 6-4 match from Vinny Gillespie and Calum MacGeoch. The win lifted their record to 6-3 together while getting their third win at the No. 2 slot for the Boilermakers.
Bulldogs' Ben Stride and Bayo Philips quickly raced out to an early lead, only to have Arthur Dobradin and Mateus Silva tie the set at 5-5. Stride and Philips strung the next two games together to take the set 7-5 and earn the point for Drake.
Matching set scores of 6-3 by MacGeoch at No. 4 against Sochurek pushed the Bulldogs' lead to 2-0. Madarasz was stunned in the first set at the top of the lineup vs. Lott, but the 58th-ranked Boilermaker overcame the deficit with a 6-0, 6-3 showing in the next two sets. The redshirt sophomore won his seventh straight while improving his record to 10-1.
At the bottom of the lineup, Tom Hands pushed Drake's lead to 3-1 by defeating Dobradin 4-6, 6-3, 6-0. The Bulldogs followed with the match-clinching win by way of Stride's three-setter over Silva in the No. 5 position. Silva captured the first set 6-2, but Stride posted back-to-back 6-3s to take the win.
The final two matches saw Purdue pick up a victory from Ugarte at the No.2 spot with a 7-6 (4), 1-6, 6-4 outing over Philips. It closed out with Gillespie putting the final point on the board for the Bulldogs in a 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 match at No. 3 against Medinilla, bringing his nine-match winning streak to an end.
The Boilermakers will have the next week off as they prepare for their Big Ten Conference opener against in-state rival and 64th-ranked Indiana. The match is set to get underway at 6 p.m. from the Schwartz Tennis Center on March 8.