10th-ranked Kentucky earned a hard-fought doubles point but scored only one singles victory, as sixth-ranked UCLA went on to a 4-2 victory Thursday at the ITA National Team Indoor Championships in Seattle. The Cats suffer their first loss of the season and fall to 3-1. Kentucky awaits Harvard Friday in consolation play.
UCLA?s Kris Kwinta and Alberto Francis scored a win at No.1 doubles over UK senior Rahim Esmail and junior Jesse Witten. The Cats battled back with a pair of tiebreaker wins to capture the doubles point. UK?s Nate Emge and Tigran Martirosyan defeated the Bruins? Tobias Clemens and Chris Lam in a 7-5 tiebreaker, while Evan Austin and Alex Hume pulled out a 10-8 tiebreaker win at No. 3 over Philipp Gruendler and Chris Yovan for a 1-0 Kentucky lead.
After a challenging 7-5 first-set win at No. 6, Hume held Yovan scoreless in the second set in what proved to be the only Kentucky singles victory. Witten and Austin fell to a pair of top-20 opponents in Tobias Clemens and Chris Lam at numbers one and two, respectively. Kwinta posted a two-set win at No. 4 over Esmail, and Gruendler topped Emge in three sets for the final margin.
Kentucky falls to the Bruins for the fourth time in three seasons. Just prior to the 2003 Indoors, the Cats dropped a tough 4-3 decision to the Bruins in Louisville. In 2002, UCLA posted a regular-season victory and a victory in the opening round of the 2002 Indoors.
No. 6 UCLA 4, No. 10 Kentucky 2
Doubles 1. Francis/Kwinta (UCLA) def. Esmail/Witten (UK) ? 8-3 2. Emge/Martirosyan (UK) def. Clemens/Lam (UCLA) ? 9-8 (5) 3. Austin/Hume (UK) def. Gruendler/Yovan (UCLA) ? 9-8 (8)
Singles 1. No. 12 Tobias Clemens (UCLA) def. No. 16 Jesse Witten (UK) ? 6-1, 6-4 2. No. 18 Chris Lam (UCLA) def. No. 81 Evan Austin (UK) ? 7-5, 7-6 (2) 3. No. 81 Tigran Martirosyan (UK) vs. No. 90 Alberto Francis (UCLA) ? DNF 4. Kris Kwinta (UCLA) def. Rahim Esmail (UK) ? 7-6 (5), 6-2 5. Philipp Gruendler (UCLA) def. No. 100 Nate Emge (UK) ? 6-0, 4-6, 6-3 6. Alex Hume (UK) def. Aaron Yovan (UCLA) ? 7-5, 6-0
