Results  |  Tournament Central

ST. LOUIS – The 31st-ranked UIndy men's tennis team fell to 12th-ranked Drury 5-2 Sunday in the Great Lakes Valley Tournament Championship match, ending the program's most successful conference postseason run since 2004-05.

It had been nine years since the Greyhounds were in the men's championship match, and 19 since they won the title (1994-95), but Sunday belonged to the Panthers (22-2, 6-0 GLVC), the Midwest's top team.

Despite the loss, this young UIndy squad (15-3, 6-0) still snapped several postseason droughts.

Last week, the Greyhounds won the East division for the first time since 2006. Friday, against Truman State, the Hounds won just their second postseason match since 2007 with a 5-1 victory. In Saturday's semifinal match against McKendree they advanced to their first championship match since 2005 by defeating the Bearcats 5-2.

The Panthers, who featured a junior and two seniors in the lineup, entered Sunday on an eight-match streak, including a 5-0 win over Lewis Friday and a 5-1 victory against Southern Indiana in the semifinals.

The two teams, ranked first and second in the Midwest Region, split the first two doubles matches.

Luke Hubert and Fernando Taricano improved to a team-best 13-2 with an 8-5 win over Christian Ibsen and Jakub Sipos in No. 3 doubles.

Drury was on the board first with an 8-2 win in the No. 2 draw, as the region's sixth-ranked duo Maximilian Hepp and Lukas Kriem defeated UIndy's Marco Torres and Fausto Cordova.

Tied 1-1, the winner on court one would head to singles play with an edge. In a close decision, Drury's Andy Blair and Jorge Nadal won 8-6 over Nico Kastunowicz and Ryan Frankel.

The Panthers added to their lead taking the first completed singles match. Drury's senior Kriem remained perfect in the No. 4 draw this spring (14-0) with a 6-2, 6-1 win over the Hounds' freshman Torres.

Taricano then won No. 6 singles over Nadal, 6-3, 6-3 continuing his recent tear and pulling UIndy within 3-2. Since starting the spring 3-3, the Rio de Janeiro, Brazil native has won nine in a row, second only to Hubert's 17 straight singles victories on the squad. Taricano is also just the second to defeat Nadal in the No. 6 draw this season.

That was as close as the Hounds would get, however, as Drury took the next two singles bouts to seal the championship.

Courts one and two each featured match-ups between regionally ranked opponents.

In No. 1, senior Blair, ranked third in the region (29th nationally) defeated seventh-ranked Kastunowicz 6-4, 6-2.

One court over it was ninth-ranked Hepp winning 6-4, 6-1 over 16th-ranked Frankel. The two singles points gave Drury its third GLVC Championship in four years and sixth overall.

Hubert and Cordova each won the first sets of their respective matches, but were unfinished once the Panthers secured their fifth point.  

"I'm very proud of my players performance this weekend but most of all, the way they competed all year long," Coach Malik Tabet said following the match. "I want to remind them where they stood a year ago, where they ended this year, and where they can be in the near future."

He continued: "I am very proud of the dog fight we gave to Drury today in the conference finals. Both (men's and women's) teams should qualify to the NCAA regional tournament and we are looking forward to a new challenge in a couple of weeks."

Tabet also commented on the women's run in the conference tournament, which ended Sunday in a 5-1 loss to Missouri-St. Louis in the third-place match.

"On the women's side, we had a tough fight against Drury yesterday and then ran out of steam this morning against Missouri-St. Louis. I cannot express enough how impressed I am with the way this women's team battles on the tennis court."

The Hounds now wait until Tuesday, April 29 for the NCAA selection show, which will reveal UIndy's seed in the NCAA Midwest Regional Tournament. Eight teams will make the regional, with the top two seeds hosting four-team brackets. The selection can be watched at NCAA.com at 8:00 p.m. ET, and the women's will be at 8:30 p.m.