Hoosiers fight Irish, crack vs. Buckeyes

After a weekend of mixed results in the ITA Men’s Kickoff at Columbus, Ohio, the Hoosiers have begun to establish a reputation as a feisty opponent.  

In Saturday’s match, No. 29 Indiana outclassed No. 28 Notre Dame 6-1, sweeping doubles and losing one singles contest. Sunday, though, the Hoosiers (3-2) fell 4-0 to host No. 3 Ohio State.

The Hoosiers’ most notable victory came thanks to senior Jeremy Langer, who knocked off No. 74 Sam Keeton 6-4, 7-5. His teammate, IU’s No. 1 singles netter junior Isade Juneau, might have registered an even more impressive result Sunday against No. 5 Blaz Rola, but his contest was called off while leading 7-6, 3-2.

IU Coach Randy Bloemendaal said he wished Juneau could have finished his match against Rola.

“It’s a tough situation,” Bloemendaal said. “He worked so hard to put himself  in that position. It’s disappointing. We lost a couple of ranked wins this weekend that way.

On Saturday, Langer and Juneau teamed up to beat the Fighting Irish’s top duo of Niall Fitzgerald and Spencer Talmadge, 8-5. Shortly after, IU’s No. 2 tandem, juniors Josh MacTaggart and Alastair Barnes, registered an 8-6 win against Greg Andrews and Casey Watt.

The cream and crimson proceeded to carry momentum into singles play. After an initial hiccup — MacTaggart dropped a 6-1, 6-4 decision to Andrews — IU took the next five matches.  

Senior Stephen Vogl led the slew of successes with a 7-6, 6-0 dismissal of Fitzgerald. Juneau followed suit in a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory against Watt. After Langer bested Keeton for the Hoosiers’ sole defeat of a ranked singles opponent on the weekend, sophomore Dimitrije Tasic edged Billy Pecor, 7-6, 4-6, 10-4, and senior Will Kendall nipped Blas Morosros, 4-6, 7-6, 10-3 to cap off a strong Saturday.    

Against Notre Dame, IU showed more poise than it did against Kentucky. Prevailing where it had faltered just days earlier, the team made a habit of taking tiebreaks and recovering from dropped sets throughout the afternoon. As a result, IU added an impressive early season upset — if only a minor one — against a highly ranked opponent to its résumé.  

However, Sunday’s encounter against the No. 3 Buckeyes, the second top-10 challenger on the schedule in the past week, produced the Hoosiers’ second loss in the same span. Ohio State’s formidable doubles line-up, headed by the nation’s top duo in Chase Buchanan and Blaz Rola, proved too much to overcome. MacTaggart and Barnes lost 8-2 to the No. 15 team, Ille Van Engelen and Devin McCarthy, while Juneau and Langer were defeated by Buchanan and Rola, 8-3, to surrender the doubles point to the Buckeyes, despite Kendall and Vogl having taken a 7-3 advantage in the other match.

The last three points, which decided the contest and saw the score balloon to 4-0, were conceded in the fourth, fifth and sixth singles slots. Vogl, Barnes and Kendall all dropped their matches in straight sets, rendering moot the top three singles bouts, which were still in progress.

The four-team tournament, which also featured No. 44 Cornell, was part of a greater, nationwide competition comprised of 60 schools. In defeating IU, Ohio State booked its spot for the culmination of the event, next month’s ITA National Team Indoor Championships.

Coach Bloemendaal said he was encouraged by his team’s play.

“We definitely got better this week,” he said. “We hung in there with one of the best teams in the country on the road.”