The University of Mississippi Athletics
Ole Miss Drops Close Match In NCAA Doubles Final
5/26/2008 | Men's Tennis
With the loss, the Rebel duo ends an outstanding year at 31-10. They became the first doubles team since 1995 to reach the NCAA Final and the first Rebels to advance that far overall in the NCAA Individual Championships. The two teams played back forth going to tiebreakers. In the first tiebreaker, Tveit and Berg had a couple of set points at 7-6 and 9-8. Van't Hof's serve got USC back up 10-9, and although Ole Miss tied it 10-10, the Trojans moved back on top and finally eked out the tiebreaker 12-10 to bring up the second set. Tveit and Berg broke to go up 2-0 in the second set, but the USC duo, who has now won 26 in a row, broke back to even it up at 2-2. The teams stayed on serve the rest of the way for another tiebreaker. Ole Miss led 6-5, but Van’t Hof pulled back even on his serve, and USC won the last two points to secure the victory. “It was a tough loss for Erling and Jonas,” head coach Billy Chadwick said. “They (USC) played really good on our set points. We are very proud of the guys; they played great all week and just came up short in the last match. We were so close to winning a national championship on Sunday with Bram (ten Berge) and Matthias (Wellermann) having match points. Overall, it was another outstanding season for the Rebels to have two doubles teams in the semifinals and to play for a national championship.” NCAA INDIVIDUAL CHAMPIONSHIPS Doubles Final -- Robert Farah and Kaes Van’t
The Rebels won their seventh consecutive SEC West title, captured the SEC Tournament Championship, hosted a regional for the eighth year in a row, advanced to the NCAA Elite Eight, boasted two teams in the semifinals of doubles and ended the year ranked No. 6 in the nation in the final team rankings.
