On Saturday, February 21 the UNC Charlotte men's tennis team hosted Elon University and I thought it would probably be a competitive match between the Atlantic 10 and Southern Conference teams. Elon was the Southern Conference champs in 2006 and 2007 and finished 17-9 last year. Since 2000, Charlotte has had just three winning seasons including the A-10 championship and a trip to the NCAAs in 2007. The Niners are coming off a 9-15 year in 2008.
As soon as the doubles got going it looked like Charlotte would struggle in the match. On courts one and two they fell behind quickly and the lead continued to grow for the Elon teams. On court one the Niners simply made too many unforced errors during very quick rallies and Elon capitalized. Both matches ended in 8-2 victories for the Phoenix. The number three team for Elon finished the sweep when they won 8-5.
As I walked around the courts during singles play, the court six match looked like it was going to be a tight one. C. Stauffer MacDowell from Elon and freshman C. Martin-Le Camp of Charlotte were playing a lot of long points and games early in their match. Both guys did a great job of getting balls back and not trying to go for too much, leading to those long points. In the fourth game with MacDowell serving I think they played six or seven deuce points before Martin-LeCamp broke. He went on to a 6-4 win in the set.
I went to visit the other courts but things were not looking good for Charlotte. They had dropped the first sets on one and two, 6-0 each. On court three, Carlin Murray of Elon was battling with Moritz Bernhoerster and they went to a first set tiebreak where Murray took it 7-5. They went back and forth in the second and Bernhoerster won it 7-5. Murray would take the third set in a super tiebreak, 10-6. At that point, Elon had already won their matches on courts 1, 2, 4 and 5 and won the match.
All that was left for the sweep was court six and MacDowell evened the match up at 1-1 with a 6-3 win in the second. They also played a super tiebreak for the third and MacDowell won it 10-7.
With the victory, Elon moved its record to 5-4 while Charlotte dropped to 1-4. It's hard to tell where Elon will fall in the Southern, but I would guess they will be in the top third and may even challenge for the conference title, but I think Furman will be a bigger test for them. Charlotte has two seniors and two juniors on their 10 man squad, so they are still rather young, but I did not see anything that would lead me to believe they can finish at .500 or better.
Time.
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