Men's Tennis Falls in Conference Quarters

Friday, April 22

Memphis, Tenn.

12:00 PM

University of Memphis

Tulane University

Apr 22, 2016 | Men's Tennis

Tigers fall to four-seeded Tulane in quarterfinals.

No. 4 seed Tulane advanced to the men's semifinals with a 4-0 win against No. 5 seed Memphis on Friday afternoon at the Dunavant-Wellford Tennis Center on the campus of the Memphis University School.

"It's a fun time of year being in the conference championships and being able to host it was really special," Head Coach Paul Goebel said. "We had a great crowd today and it was a really good college tennis match. Two teams that have both been ranked in the top 25 in the nation and to play in the first match in our conference tournament really shows how strong the conference has become."

The Green Wave earned 6-4 wins from Dominik Koepfer and Chi-Shan Jao, who are ranked No. 22 in the nation, on court one, and Sebastian Rey and Ian Van Cott on court three to claim the doubles point.

Tulane carried its strong performance into singles play as the Green Wave closed the match with three wins. Koepfer, the No. 2 ranked singles player in the country, started singles with a 6-4, 6-4 win against Memphis' Ryan Peniston on court one.. Peniston came back from trailing 4-0 at one point to make it four-all, but could not steal the first set and dropped the second with an identical set score. Rey and Tyler Schick followed up Koepfer's win with victories at No. 3 and No. 5.

Tulane will face No. 1 seed USF at 10 a.m. ET/9 a.m. CT on Saturday.

Memphis will now await word on if it has done enough to warrant an NCAA at-large bid, otherwise, the team's season is complete.

"When you make a tough schedule, it can go either way," Goebel said. "We had a young team, a lot of freshmen and sophomores, but they handled it very well. There were a couple of chances, it was a really fine line in a couple of matches there. We lost the doubles point today, but I think we lost five out of the six on no-ad points. If we can get those points to go our way, maybe the outcome is different. But credit to our opponent for that."

"We kept fighting the whole match. In these last three matches, we lost first sets and came back and pushed them to a third set, which is really good. We had a couple of guys who have been really injured and haven't practice the last couple of weeks, but that shows what our Tiger pride is about. I think they're gaining experience and learning how they are going to have to play the big points. I think our conference keeps getting better and better and we've maintained, we've proved that we can play with any of the teams in our conference and any teams in the nation, and that's exciting, but we just have to keep working and adding to each of their games and see where we can be next year."

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Doubles Competition (Order of Finish: 1, 3)
1. #22 Dominik Koepfer/Chi-Shan Jao (TLN) def. Kai Lemke/Louis Asser (MEM) 6-4
2. Tyler Schick/Constantin Schmitz (TLN) vs. Ryan Peniston/Felix Rauch (MEM) 5-4, unfinished
3. Sebastian Rey/Ian Van Cott (TLN) def. Andrew Watson/Shakeel Manji (MEM) 6-4

Singles Competition (Order of Finish: 1, 3, 5)
1. #2 Dominik Koepfer (TLN) def. #81 Ryan Peniston (MEM) 6-4, 6-4
2. #104 Constantin Schmitz (TLN) vs. #101 Andrew Watson (MEM) 7-5, 4-6, 1-1, unfinished
3. Sebastian Rey (TLN) def. Kai Lemke (MEM) 6-4, 6-4
4. Chi-Shan Jao (TLN) vs. Chris Patzanovsky (MEM) 7-5, 3-6, 2-1, unfinished
5. Ian Van Cott (TLN) def. Felix Rauch (MEM) 6-1, 2-6, 6-4
6. Tyler Schick (TLN) vs. Shakeel Manji (MEM) 4-1, unfinished