Leena Butt/HIGHLANDER


Date: April 27, 2012
Anteaters 4 – Highlanders 0

The UC Riverside men’s tennis team competed in the Big West Conference Championship at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden on Friday afternoon, where they were eliminated by UC Irvine in a decisive 4-0 defeat in round one. The Highlanders were the sixth seed in the tournament while UC Irvine was the third seed. With the loss, the Highlanders concluded their season with a record of 6-18.

UC Irvine easily handled the Highlanders as they won matches at courts Nos. 2 and 3 in doubles action. On court No. 2, pair Luis Gastao and Kevin Griffin lost 8-2 to UCI’s pair of Ryan Cheung and Jon Kazarian. Court No. 3 saw Highlanders’ Simon Peters and Jimmy Roberts lose 8-2 to UCI’s pair of Fabian Matthews and Shuhei Shivabara. The other doubles match at court No. 1 was called off as Irvine already won the matches at court Nos. 2 and 3. Highlander’s Austin Andres and Felix Macherez had the lead 7-5 on court No. 1 before the match was stopped.

Irvine would go on to dominate the singles matches as well, winning the first three matches to secure the sweep of the Highlanders. At court No. 2 Jimmy Roberts was defeated 6-1, 6-0 by UCI’s Sam Gould, and at court No. 5, UCI’s Shuhei Shibahara edged out Highlander Simon Peters 6-4, 6-2 in the match. Irvine’s Ryan Cheung dominated Kelly Dickson defeating him 6-1, 6-0. Since the Anteaters gathered the four points needed to win already, the rest of the single matched were stopped.