NCAA men's tennis: USC bumped by Baylor in quarterfinals

May 16, 2015

There will be a new crown-holder in 2015. The defending-champion Trojans have been knocked out of the NCAA tournament after a hard-fought 4-2 loss to host Baylor in the quarterfinal round. With USC’s loss, the Pac-12 is completely out of the NCAA men’s tennis team championships.

The Trojans dropped the doubles point after Yannick Hanfmann and Roberto Quiroz fell to the junior/senior combo of Julian Lenz and Diego Galeano at No. 1 doubles but hung tough in singles play, eventually drawing even with the second-seeded Bears after Eric Johnson took care of business at No. 3 singles (6-3, 6-4 over Max Tchoutakian).

The Trojans again pulled even again at 2-2 with Quiroz’s 6-3, 6-3 triumph at No. 2 over Croatian senior Tony Lupieri, but near-simultaneous victories from Baylor’s South American tandem of Chilean Felipe Rios and Paraguayan Galeano sealed the deal for the Bears over the Men of Troy. Rios beat Nick Crystal 7-5, 7-6 at No. 6 singles, while Galeano edged Jonny Wang 6-3, 7-6 on court four.

FINAL: Rios and Galeano with simultaneous wins on courts 4 & 6 to give the Bears the 4-2 win! pic.twitter.com/UM8HwVCxHW

— BaylorMTennis (@BaylorMTennis) May 16, 2015

USC finishes up the 2015 season with a 25-5 record, defeating Idaho, San Diego State and Duke in the first three rounds of the NCAA tournament before falling to the Bears in the quarterfinals. Baylor, on the other hand, advances to its first semifinal since 2007 and fifth overall. Hosting the final rounds of the NCAA tennis championships for the first time in program history, the Bears are now a perfect 26-0 when playing an NCAA tournament match on its home courts.

And yeah, this is Pac-12.com, but some kudos are in order for the Big 12 for what its teams have done in the NCAA tournament this year:

#Big12TEN No conference has had three teams advance to the #NCAAMWT national semifinals since 1999. Until now.

— Big 12 Conference (@Big12Conference) May 16, 2015

USC men’s tennis players are far from finished in Waco. Hanfmann, Quiroz and Wang are all in the singles championship bracket (with Crystal as an alternate), while Quiroz and Hanfmann are in the doubles championship bracket.