NO. 11 TEXAS A&M DEFEATS NO. 7 BAYLOR, 4-0, AT NATIONAL INDOORS

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—Texas A&M junior Niall Angus posted a victory at No. 6 singles and combined with freshman Jeremy Efferding to clinch the all-important doubles point to help lead the No. 11-ranked Texas A&M Aggies to a 4-0 victory over the No. 7 Baylor Bears at the ITA National Team Indoor Championships being hosted by the University of Virginia on Sunday.
“After coming up short in the last couple of matches,” Aggie head coach Steve Denton stated. “I thought today’s match was very important. We won a very tight doubles point and kept up the pressure by winning four of the six first sets in singles. We played with a lot of energy today and that made a huge difference. As I said yesterday, I really like this team. They are fighters and very resilient. I anticipate that we will continue to get better as the season progresses.”
The No. 55 doubles team of freshman Jackson Withrow and sophomore Junior Ore defeated the Baylor tandem of Roberto Maytin and Mate Zsiga, 9-7, in No. 1 doubles. With the No. 2 doubles match between senior Aggies John Lewis and Colin Hoover (No. 36 overall) and Baylor’s Marko Krickovic and Robert Verzaal all tied up at 8-8 and even the tiebreaker was tied at five, the No. 3 A&M doubles team of Angus and Efferding posted a tiebreaker win 9-8 (7-5) over Julian Bley and Kike Grangeiro to clinch the doubles point.
As Aggie head coach Steve Denton mentioned, the A&M players jumped out to first set wins in four of the six matches. Angus lost his first set to Bley, 6-4, but Angus, a junior from England, bounced back to take the second set, 6-2, and then posted a 6-0 win in the third to clinch the match.
A&M’s senior co-captain Hoover, from Victoria, Texas, posted the first point in singles play with a straight sets 6-2, 7-6 (7-5) victory over the No. 100-ranked player Maytin. Ore, from Gaithersburg, Maryland, was a straight sets winner over Krickovic, 6-3, 6-4 to move the score to 3-0 and set the table for Angus to clinch.
“Junior Ore played his best match today and so did Jeremy (Efferding) and Jackson (Withrow),” Denton explained. “Niall (Angus) came through again and he defeated a player he has never beaten before and was able to clinch the match for us.”
The win enabled the Aggies to go 1-2 in the ITA National Team Indoor Championships and improve their overall record to 7-3. The Bears went 0-3 at the tournament and dropped to 4-4 on the year.
Texas A&M will be back on its home courts on Friday, Feb. 24 against TCU at 6 p.m. It will mark the first time since a 4-3 victory over Mississippi State on Jan. 29 for A&M to play at home where the men have won 40 straight matches, a tennis and overall school mark.
No. 11 Texas A&M 4, No. 7 Baylor 0
Doubles
1—(55) Withrow/Ore, A&M def. Maytin/Zsiga, BU—9-7
2—(36) Lewis/Hoover, A&M vs. Krickovic/Verzaal, BU—8-8 (5-5) DNF
3—Efferding/Angus, A&M def. Grangeiro/Bley, BU—9-8 (7-5)
Singles
1—(15) Alexis Klegou, A&M vs. (25) Mate Zsiga, BU—4-6, 6-6 DNF
2—Colin Hoover, A&M def. (100) Roberto Maytin, BU—6-2, 7-6 (7-5)
3—Junior Ore, A&M def. Marko Krickovic, BU—6-3, 6-4
4—Jeremy Efferding, A&M vs. Diego Galeano, BU—6-3, 3-6, 2-1 DNF
5—Jackson Withrow, A&M vs. (98) Lars Behlen, BU—7-5, 5-5 DNF
6—Niall Angus, A&M def. Julian Bley, BU—4-6, 6-2, 6-0
Order of Finish:
Doubles 1, 3
Singles 2, 3, 6
Season Records: Texas A&M (7-3) Baylor (4-4)