Rebs Let Close One Get Away

ATHENS, Ga. -- In a battle between two heavyweights in college tennis, seventh-seeded Ole Miss lost a nail-biter (4-3) to 10th-seeded Illinois Thursday at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex. Illinois (21-8) advances to the quarterfinal round to face Ohio State, while Ole Miss ends its season at 24-5.
With the match all square it came down to a battle between two of the top players in the nation. On court one, Illinois’ Kevin Anderson, ranked No. 5 and Ole Miss’ Erling Tveit, ranked No. 13 went three sets to decide the winner. Tveit won a first set tiebreaker, 7-6(5) on an ace.
Anderson answered in the second set, winning the tiebreaker, 7-2 to pull even. In the deciding frame, Tveit was down 15-40 in the fifth game and came back to hold serve. At 3-3, he got down again, this time 0-40. He won three straight points to even it back up before Anderson won the next two points for a 4-3 lead. That was all the 6-7 junior needed to go on and win 6-3 and clinch his team’s victory.
“That was a great college match,” head coach Billy Chadwick said. “It went down to the very last match and the very last set between two of the best players in college tennis. We started the match off great taking the doubles point. We were looking at being able to take these guys at four, five and six. We got them at four, we got them at six and five was close. The difference in the last match was that Kevin served better than Erling in the last set.”