Box ScoreBOCA RATON, Fla. -- For the second straight year, Barry University men's tennis team won the Sunshine State Conference regular season championship, this time following a 6-3 win at Lynn Saturday.
The No. 3 Buccaneers (17-0, 6-0 SSC) became the first team to capture the league regular season title a year ago when the conference began recognizing regular season champions. Prior to last year, the SSC only awarded titles to the conference tournament champion.
Lynn (14-3, 4-2) made this title all the more rewarding after winning two of the three doubles matches to give the Fighting Knights the upper hand heading into singles play. After Barry's eighth-ranked
Ahmed Triki and
Fabian Groetsch defeated Pavel Mojha and Mehdi Laalej, 8-2, at No. 1 doubles, Lynn turned the tables.
The Fighting Knights duo of Alessio Iannozzi and Daniel Riggs beat
Renato Lombardi and
Kevin Sielmann, 8-5, at the No. 2 flight. It was the first match for Sielmann since a March 12 doubles win over Northwood (Mich.) after sitting out the past month with an injury. Lynn's Fernando Rivas and Paolo Volpicelli won a lengthy battle over
Dominik Haider and
Franco Echenique, 9-7, at No. 3 to put the Fighting Knights ahead 2-1.
But Lombardi defeated Volpicelli, 7-5, 6-1, at the No. 5 flight in the first singles match completed to even the team score at 2-2. Third-ranked Triki gave the Bucs a 3-2 lead when he defeated 47th-ranked Rivas, 6-2, 6-2, at No. 2. Barry's 29th-ranked
Nico Dreer needed an opening-set tiebreaker before going on auto-pilot in the second set to beat Iannozzi, 7-6 (7-3), 6-0, at the No. 6 spot. That put the Bucs ahead 4-2, moving within one more singles victory to seal the title.
Riggs, ranked 11th in the country, didn't make it easy for Barry, though. After dropping the first set 6-2 to Groetsch, who is ranked No. 4 in the nation, Riggs won the last two sets at No. 1 singles, 6-3, 6-4, to trim the Bucs lead to 4-3.
But Barry's
Fabian Pronnet clinched the title with a 7-5, 6-1 victory over Laalej at the No. 4 flight. Haider put the finishing touches on things when he authored a 6-7 (5-7), 6-1, 7-6 (7-5) triumph over Mojha at No. 3 singles.
Barry improved to 28-22 all-time against Lynn.
The Buccaneers will host 26th-ranked Flagler at 10 a.m. Sunday at Buccaneer Tennis Center, where former Barry assistant coach Thomas Hipp will make his return as the Saints head coach. Hipp took over the Director of Tennis and head coaching duties at Flagler following Barry's 2013 NCAA Championship season.
Sunday's match will be available via
LIVE STATS.
