On a day where weather concerns kept No. 3 Texas and No. 35 North Carolina State playing only singles matches, the Longhorns swept the field to win the match 6-0, keeping them undefeated at home and starting their three-week, seven-match home stand with a victory.
Texas’ No. 4-ranked Christian Sigsgaard defeated the Wolfpack’s No. 25 Alexis Galarneau, 6-3, 6-1 to get the match started for the Longhorns. Sigsgaard went down 0-3 to start the match before winning 12 of the last 13 games to seal the victory in dominant fashion.
“(Going down 0-3) is going to happen sometimes,” Sigsgaard said. “It’s just how you regroup after that. I feel like I responded very well, winning 11 games in a row. Overall, it was a great match.”
The match against the Wolfpack was the Longhorns’ first of three this week alone, including matches Tuesday and Thursday against Rice and No. 1 Ohio State, respectively — the latter of which dealt Texas its only defeat of the year at the ITA National Team Indoor Championships.
“It’s always nice starting off with a win,” Sigsgaard said. “We actually don’t play that many matches. When you play tournaments, if you go far you play five days in a row. Now we have a day in between, so I think we’ll be ready for every single match.”
Despite the commanding victory, head coach Michael Center was not pleased with the emotional intensity of the team to begin the match, as the Longhorns started off slow in a few of the first singles matches.
“I thought today we didn’t do as good a job emotionally as we need to be at the beginning of the match, it was pretty quiet,” Center said. “I thought we got off to a slow start and then a couple of the guys really picked up and got three points pretty comfortably, but we were struggling to get the fourth point today … It was just kind of quiet out there today. We need to do a better job when we start the match that we’re at the emotional pitch that we want to be at.”
No. 9 Yuya Ito would eventually garner the elusive fourth point and clinch the match for Texas, winning 7-6 (6), 6-4 over Igor Saveljic. Just before that, however, No. 49 Harrison Scott moved past the Wolfpack’s Yannai Barkai — 6-4 and 6-0 — to push the Longhorns’ lead to 2-0. Scott was up 2-0 in the first set before Barkai rallied to 4-5 in the first set until Scott put him away.
“I say to myself ‘Just don’t worry about it, take it point by point, know you’re up so you know what you’re doing, you know how to win,’” Scott said. “Go to my towel, go back up to the line and keep going forward.”
The Longhorns will welcome the Rice Owls on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Texas Tennis Center.
