A special night for the men's tennis team was quickly spoiled as the Bulls fell on Senior Night at the hands of the defending Mid-American Conference champion Western Michigan Broncos on Saturday. The Bulls lost 6-1 at the Village Glen Tennis Center.
Buffalo (5-14, 0-3 MAC) did not get off to a good start against the Broncos (13-7, 2-0 MAC), losing all three doubles matches to fall behind 1-0 going into singles play.
In first doubles, the team of senior Nikesh Singh Panthlia and junior Octavian Stane was defeated 8-2 by the Broncos' Casey Cullen and Kevin Hayward.
The second doubles tandem of freshmen Marcelo Mazzetto and Juan Carlos Wynter faced Alex Birchmeier and Bryan Norville and were downed 8-4.
Western Michigan's Michael Calderone and Kazuya Komada demolished the Bulls' final doubles team of sophomore Kirill Kolomytes and junior Alexis Lluis by a score of 8-1.
"We lacked intensity right off the bat in doubles, which we got down quickly," said assistant coach Nick Zieziula. "You get down one to zero, and we regrouped on singles and started well but we didn't finish when we had opportunities."
The Bulls were pressured to try to win more than half of the singles matches that took place. Zieziula believes that is a tough challenge for any team to come back from.
"When you're looking at six singles matches and you have to take four out of six versus just to get a split, as much as you try to not focus on it...you don't let that one point be your make or break. But it definitely gives you more confidence to win that point," Zieziula said.
Buffalo did not start singles play on a strong note, as Singh Panthlia lost in first singles. Hayward dominated Singh Panthlia, cruising to a 6-3, 6-2 victory.
This loss put a lot of pressure on Mazzetto in second singles, and he rose to the challenge, winning his match, 7-5, 5-7, 1-0 (12-10), against Komada in a super-tiebreaker. In the tiebreaker, Mazzetto was down early 7-3, but rallied to win the next seven points.
Mazzetto's victory was the only win for Buffalo on the night. The Bulls lost in the rest of the singles matches.
In third singles, Stane also was able to take his match to a tiebreaker, but he could not prevail, losing 4-6, 6-1, 1-0 (10-7).
After losing the first set 6-7 in fourth singles, Kolomytes decided to retire in the middle of the second set when he was down 1-2. He didn't want to re-aggravate the injury that kept him out of action almost all of March.
Western Michigan took the last two points in fifth and sixth singles in straight sets. Norville defeated Lluis 6-0, 6-2 in fifth, while Wynter was no contest in sixth for Calderone, losing 6-3, 6-1.
Buffalo then hosted Binghamton on Sunday afternoon at the Village Glen. The Bulls earned a 4-3 victory with their singles play leading the way. After falling behind to the Bobcats, 3-1, Buffalo picked up wins in the final three singles matches to earn the victory.
The Bulls next face off against MAC rival Northern Illinois on Friday, April 5 at 2 p.m. from DeKalb, Ill.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
