The men’s tennis team concluded its season with a 4-1 loss to No. 22 Texas Tech in the first round of the NCAA Championships on Saturday. Junior Andre Dome will compete in the individual championships and Matt Fawcett will join him in the doubles tournament, both of which will be held from May 23 to 28 in Athens, Ga.
The Mustangs came into the match ranked No. 63 in the nation and won their only point of the day by taking two doubles matches against the Red Raiders to begin the match. Jurgen De Jager and Marco Comuzzo won 8-6 while Jordan Bridge and Brian McPhee sealed the doubles point with a 8-4 win.
The singles matches, however, broke the other way for the Mustangs. Fawcett was narrowly defeated in consecutive 6-4 sets against Rafael Garcia and Sebastian Bell, the hero of the Mustang’s Big West Championship victory over UC Santa Barbara, fell 6-1, 6-3.
Dome and Gonzalo Escobar were locked in a 3-3 tie in the deciding third set and De Jager led Francisco Zambon in their final set, but before they could finish, Texas Tech’s Vitor Manzini completed a 6-4 third-set victory over Bridge to give the Red Raiders the win. Had the match gone the other direction, Cal Poly could have come out victorious with wins from Dome and De Jager.
The team’s loss concludes the season for most of Cal Poly’s roster and marks the end of McPhee’s and Bell’s Mustang career. Dome, a product of Arroyo Grande High School, will anchor the Cal Poly lineup again in 2013 with De Jager and Comuzzo filling out part of the starting roster.