SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – The No. 55 San Francisco Dons held home court with a 4-0 win over No. 67 Portland on Saturday afternoon at the Cal Club. San Francisco improves to 16-8 overall and 6-3 in West Coast Conference play, while the Pilots fall to 12-6 overall and 5-3 in league play.
The Pilots will conclude the regular season Sunday at Santa Clara. A win over the Broncos would move Portland into a tie with both San Francisco and Pacific for fourth place in the WCC standings. Due to tiebreaker scenarios, the Pilots will enter the WCC Championships as the No. 5 seed and face No. 4 Pacific in the quarterfinals regardless of Sunday's outcome.
The Dons jumped out early by claiming the doubles point with wins at the No. 2 and No. 3 positions.
In singles play, USF won the top three positions in straight sets to secure the victory. The bottom three positions were tight battles when the overall match was secured.
"Credit to San Francisco, they are a good team and played well today," Portland head coach Aaron Gross said. "It has been a long run for us these last six weeks or so and I fear we are running out of steam. We had several set points at No. 5 and No. 6 singles today and Steffen served for the second set at No. 1, but came up just short."
Bernardo Saraiva knocked off Steffen Dierauf at the No. 1 position 6-2, 7-6. Nils Skajaa defeated Reid deLaubenfels 6-1, 6-4 and then James Tailman knocked off Michail Pervolarakiss 7-5, 6-2. Mathieu Garcia and Thomas Takemoto were tied 3-3 in the third set, while USF's No. 5 and No. 6 players held one set tiebreaker leads over Pierre Garcia and Jared Madison, respectively.
"These types of experiences show to me why college tennis is successful at producing good pro players," Gross noted. "There may be more ex-college players in the top 300 in the world today than ever before – mainly because the toughness that is required to adjust to conditions on a days' notice, the travel, trying to study between matches, dealing with nagging injuries, etc. and doing all of this while you have a bunch of people counting on you each day to produce.
"I think we have done a great job this year at adjusting, but today was just a bit too much to overcome. The true indicator of how good our team has been at adjusting is that we have only lost back-to-back matches once this season, which is a great stat. Every team will have a rough day at some point, but to cut it off at just one day is really important. That is a skill that we will be calling on at this point in the season."
The Pilots will look for a quick bounce-back when they make the short trek to Santa Clara and close out the regular season against the Broncos on Sunday at 12 p.m.
#55 San Francisco 4, #67 Portland 0
San Francisco, Calif. (Cal Club)
April 18, 2015
Singles1. Bernardo Saraiva (USF) def. Steffen Dierauf (PORT); 6-2, 7-6 (3)
2. Nils Skajaa (USF) def. Reid deLaubenfels (USF); 6-1, 6-4
3. James Tallman (USF) def. Michail Pervolarakis (PORT); 7-5, 6-2
4. Thomas Takemoto (USF) def. Mathieu Garcia (PORT); 6-2, 2-6, 2-2
5. Vasco Valverde (USF) def. Pierre Garcia (PORT); 7-6 (2), 3-3
6. Johan Samuellson (USF) def. Jared Madison (PORT); 7-6 (10), 3-3
Doubles1. Saraiva/Skajaa (USF) vs. Dierauf/Pervolarakis (POR) unfinished
2. Brockstedt/Tallman (USF) def. deLaubenfels/Andreasen (POR) 6-3
3. Takemoto/Valverde (USF) def. Garcia/Garcia (POR) 6-3
Order of Finish: Singles (2,3,1), Doubles (3,2)
