The drought continued for the men's tennis team as UB was swept 4-0 by Western Michigan in the opening round of the MAC tournament on Thursday at the Village Glen Tennis Center in Williamsville. The Bulls have still never won a conference match in four years of competition.
The matches were moved to the indoor facilities at the Village Glen after a controversial decision about the weather.
"We wanted to play outside," said team captain Justin Brtko. "Their coach wanted to play inside. The courts were dry, we really wanted to play outside that would have helped us a lot."
The change of venue had a large effect on what happened in the matches. The Village Glen's courts have a harder surface than the UB Tennis Center where the match was supposed to have taken place. The harder surface made for much quicker play which played to the strengths of the Western Michigan team.
"Our team is a much better outdoor team," said UB men's tennis coach Russ Crispell. "All my guys play much better on a slower surface. That coupled with the fact that this was an Athletes For Athletes event. A couple hundred athletes were scheduled to come out [to the UB Tennis Center]. It was definitely a big let down for us."
The unfavorable court and the lack of a large crowd didn't prevent the Bulls from opening the day with an inspired effort in the doubles matches.
"The guys responded absolutely tremendous in the doubles," said Crispell. "That was the most intense doubles match I've ever seen my team play."
The third-seeded Broncos have four players that are first or second team All-MAC, yet the sixth-seeded Bulls played them close. WMU never pulled away to more than a one-game lead in any of the three doubles contests.
Unfortunately for UB, they could not score any necessary breaks of serve to take the lead in their doubles matches and lost the important doubles point to the Broncos. UB's Brtko and Fery Kaisman (0-5 MAC) took on Western Michigan's top pair, Ravishankar Pathanjali and Ryan Maarschalk (4-1 MAC) losing a heartbreaker 9-7. Buffalo's third pair, Rohan Raikar and Josh Liederman (0-5 MAC) lost the last two games to the Broncos' Dan Grupp and Mike Findling (3-2 MAC) after tying the score at six.
Losing the doubles matches had a negative effect that carried over to the singles matches.
"Even if you don't think about it your emotions are taken from you," said Brtko. "You're just down automatically, not just by a point but emotionally."
Western Michigan went on to sweep UB in singles 3-0 to give the Broncos a 4-0 victory.
"They battled us real well," said WMU coach Dave Morin. "They had chances, they played real well in the doubles, and had chances to win that doubles point. In the last 51 matches over the last two years we are 46-5 when we win the doubles point."
Western Michigan will go on to play No. 2 seed Bowling Green in the next round. UB ends it's season 10-11 (0-6 MAC) but are looking forward to next year.
