After two straight matches away from Bloomington, Indiana men’s tennis returned to the IU Tennis Center to take on Texas Tech University on Friday.
The squads had only faced off seven times in their history coming into Friday, and the Red Raiders won five of those matchups. Indiana won the first matchup between the two in 1987, but Texas Tech won five straight between 2013-18 before the Hoosiers ended their draught in 2019. Since then it had been almost seven years since the squads last faced off.
The Hoosiers dominated the Red Raiders 4-0 Friday, off a strong performance from redshirt junior Sam Landau.
Indiana started the match off strong with the doubles team of graduate student Michael Andre and sophomore Matteo Antonescu. The doubles squad came out fast and won points, quickly putting away the Texas Tech doubles team of fifth-year seniors Tyler Stewart and Sebastian Abboud by a score of 6-2.
Indiana’s redshirt junior Facundo Yunis and sophomore Braeden Gelletich secured early points for the Hoosiers, too, defeating Texas Tech’s sophomore Ludovico Vaccari and junior Felipe Pagnacco 6-4. Landau and senior Jip van Assendelft left their match unfinished after being up 5-4 as the Hoosiers already had two out of the three doubles matches to secure the point.
Landau, who was 3-1 in singles on the season coming into Friday, kept his momentum going in his singles match, taking the first set 6-2. Landau put his backhand, forehand and serve on display as he put the Hoosiers up 2-0 with a 6-2, 6-2 win.
Gelletich was the next to finish, as he quietly took down Abboud 6-4, 6-2. The Hoosiers then needed just one more win to secure the victory.
Van Assendelft’s match went back and forth with Stewart, but his big serve was dominant in the first set, leading him to a 7-5 win. He finished his opponent off in the second set 6-3, which sealed the victory for the Hoosiers.
Andre faced long rallies against Pagnacco throughout his sets, which seemed to fall in his favor. But his match was left unfinished 6-4, 5-5. Junior Ben Pomeranets lost the first set 2-6 to sophomore Thiago Guglieri, and was looking better in the second, but left the set unfinished 5-4. Yunis' match was also left unfinished 6-7, 3-0 against Vaccari.
The Hoosiers have a week of rest at home before they face off against UCLA at 6 p.m. March 6 and USC at noon March 8 at the IU Tennis Center.
