Box Score The Portland State men showed fight against its crosstown rival on Sunday afternoon, forcing three sets in four of the singles matches, but couldn't get over the hump in any of them and were swept 7-0.
"I was impressed with our high quality of play in singles," head coach
Toby Krauel said following the match. "We need to work on finishing our matches and starting points in doubles. Our guys fought really hard and if we maintain that effort we will win a lot of matches this year."
As Krauel said, the Viking played good tennis and the match was much closer than the final score indicates, as the Vikings had a number of chances to pull of upsets. Perhaps the match of the day came at No. 2 singles, where Lucas Castelo Branco and Nicklas Oberg went back and forth.
After taking the opening set 7-5, Castelo Branco dropped the second set 6-0. In the third, he came up fractionally short, losing 6-4. As his match was closing, Tommy Edwards also made a strong push toward a win at No. 4.
Edwards came out on fire, placing the ball wherever he wanted on the court and jumping out to a quick 3-0 lead. He withstood a comeback by Eleftherios Neos to win the opening set 6-4. In the second set, the two were inseparable until a tiebreaker, where Neos just edged out the Viking.
The match had already been decided at that point, so the match went to a 10-point tiebreak. Edwards had his back against the wall, trailing 9-5, but showed no quit. He was able to stave off four straight match points to tie it up at 9-all. Neos, however, rebounded to win the next two points and earn the win.
The Vikings also had chances at lines five and six. Sam Roberts bounced back from dropping the first set to force a tiebreaker as well. Portland's Issa Yoshida held on for a 10-7 win in the third set tiebreak.
A trend of the day for the Vikings, Nikola Dimitrijevic also came up just short, losing a third-set tiebreak 10-7 at the No. 6 spot.
Portland State came out a little slow in the doubles as the hosts won all three matches to claim the first point of the day.
MATCH NOTES: The Vikings fall to 0-12 all-time against Portland.
