A large crowd watched the Iowa men’s tennis team take care of the Marquette Golden Eagles on Feb. 6, 6-1.
“The crowd was unbelievable tonight,” junior Dom Patrick said. “We hadn’t had that kind of support for a while.”
The Hawkeyes cruised to an easy doubles-point victory. The freshmen duo of Josh Silverstein and Jake Jacoby won decisively (6-2), and the No. 31 pairing of senior Matt Hagan and Patrick clinched the team point with a 6-2 win of their own.
“[Hagan and Patrick] playing well in doubles is vital to our success,” head coach Ross Wilson said. “Every good team has juniors and seniors playing well, and Matt and Dom have been through some battles.”
Freshmen Lefteris Theodorou and Stieg Martens were trailing, 4-3, when their match was abandoned.
“Getting that doubles point is always key, especially at home with the crowd,” Wilson said. “The guys get into it and ride that wave. Josh and Jake lost some tough matches last weekend … but they settled down tonight.”
Patrick said he and Hagan want to lead by example with four freshmen playing behind them.
“We’re playing for the team, but we definitely want to take care of business to show the freshmen how to do it, and hopefully they carry it over into their matches,” he said.
Iowa had its hands full in the singles matches but came away with a number of close individual wins to clinch the overall victory.
Hagan was first to finish in the No. 1 slot. After trailing in the first set, Hagan battled back for a 7-6, (4), 6-2 victory over Vukasin Teofanovic.
Minutes after Hagan finished his match, Patrick claimed victory at No. 2 with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Daniel Fernandez.
“I have a lot of confidence in Matt [Hagan], and whether he’s up or down, I know we’re in a good position, and I feed off that,” Patrick said.
Martens, in the No. 4 spot for Iowa, put the Hawkeyes up 4-0 and sealed the team win with an individual come-from-behind victory over Andre Romanello (3-6, 6-3, 6-3).
Theodorou was next to finish at No. 3, pushing the team score to 5-0 with another comeback win against Nick Dykema. Theodorou dropped his first set but came back to win (4-6, 6-4, 6-2).
Jacoby dropped his first singles match of the year (6-3, 3-6, [10-1]) to Kristiyan Trukov.
Silverstein finished the match with a win of his own at the No. 5 spot, defeating Cameron Tehrani (5-7, 6-3, [10-5]).
“We won tonight, and that’s always a good thing,” Wilson said. “The freshmen played like freshmen, and there were some errors that we don’t usually make, though.”
Patrick said he thought the key to the victory for the Hawkeyes was gaining some quick momentum in the doubles matches, which gave everyone confidence.
Wilson feels this is a sign of things to come .
“With our team, anytime we win is big,” he said. “It’s big for the freshmen. For those guys, they need to learn quickly before we get into Big Ten play and play some tougher matches.”
