Men's tennis falls to Texas A&M, Texas
The men's tennis team returned home this Tuesday from a disappointing couple of days.
On April 14 the Owls competed against the University of Texas at Austin at Jake Hess Tennis Stadium.
This was the last opportunity for UT and Rice to compete here in Houston as Southwest Conference foes.
Currently topping the charts with a national ranking of 13, UT solidly stumped the Rice men and sent them home with a convincing loss.
However, the 7-0 loss for the Owls shouldn't be taken at face value.
There were definitely a number of bright moments for the Owls in their bout with UT.
Senior Jon Elsberry provided the Rice men with a little hope as he took on UT's No. 1-ranked B. J. Stearns.
Elsberry started the match off with a bang, breaking Stearns' service game and taking the first set 6-3.
However, Stearns, now sporting an individual ranking of 58 in the nation, returned the favor to Elsberry (6-3) and forced the match into a third set.
In the end, Stearns came out on top with a 6-4 win in the third set.
Nevetheless, Elsberry's all-around solid playing in the first set did make the match all the more interesting.
In doubles action, Elsberry teamed up with fellow senior Shaheen Ladhani to take on UT's No. 1 doubles team, also headed by Stearns.
Again, Elsberry and Ladhani were able to mix things up and give the UT starlets a run for their money.
Ladhani and Elsberry took the match all the way to a tie-breaker although they eventually capitulated 7-3.
UT swept the singles play (6-0) refusing to give up even one set, with the only exceptions being the Elsberry-Stearns match and the match between freshman Robert Collins and UT's Eric Allen (1-6, 6-4, 1-6).
On Monday, the Owls traveled to College Station to meet up with the Texas A&M University Aggies.
Although the Aggies were also able to send the Rice men packing, the win was by a much thinner margin.
Disappointingly uncharacteristic in their doubles play, the Rice men lost every one of their doubles matches and failed to nab a doubles point at the get-go.
The play was then left to the singles matches, where the Owls made a pretty strong showing.
Rice picked up three singles wins and was almost able to make it four with the near win of sophomore Efe Ustundag in his match against A&M's Eduardo Martinez.
After losing the first set, Ustundag fought back tough in the second set to pull with a 7-5 victory in the tie-breaker.
However, Martinez came back even stronger in the third and put Ustundag away 6-4.
Texas A&M Assistant Coach Charles Emley gave Rice a lot of credit. "They kept fighting the entire time," he said.
The Owls left Wednesday for Fort Worth to compete in the SWC.
This item appeared in the Sports section of the April 19, 1996 issue.
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