MIAMI SHORES, Fla. -- George Samuel has gotten used to booking trips to Phoenix. 

Make this trip No. 3 to the desert since 2013.

Samuel and Barry's No. 1-ranked men's tennis team dethroned last year's national champion when the Buccaneers swept eighth-ranked West Florida, 5-0, in the NCAA Division II South Region championship at Buccaneer Tennis Center Tuesday. It is the Bucs' 14th region title, and it sets up a trip to Arizona for the Round of 16 in Surprise.

"It feels great to be going back again," the Bucs 27-year coach said. "We had a heck of a day, and it started with some real fight in doubles. With our backs against the wall at No. 1, Filip Zupancic and Fernando Tous really pulled through. That was huge going into singles."

Zupancic and Tous were staring at a 7-4 deficit to 12th-ranked Serdar Bojadjiev and Lucas Sanchez at No. 1 pairs, but won the next two games to cut it to 7-6. After trading the next two games to put the Argonauts in position to take the match, Tous and Zupancic responded again to tie it up at 8-8. The Buccaneers pair won the tiebreaker, 7-5, to send Barry into singles with a 3-0 lead.

"It was super crucial," Zupancic said. "We thought we could win, but we didn't think it would come that way. We just kept going. We believed in winning. We trained so hard to get to this moment, and now we're here.

"It's a super nice moment. We're super excited. We're the favorites, and we'll take our chances."

INSIDE THE MATCHUP
Final: Barry 5, West Florida 0
Records: Barry (22-2), West Florida (24-4)
 

DOUBLES:

• Carlos Gomez and Vivien Versier worked Nicolas Lecoutre and Juan Cabrera for an 8-2 victory at No. 3 doubles and a 1-Love Bucs lead. It was the first loss this year for the Argonaut pair.
• Blake Bayldon and Matias Larregina extended the lead to 2-0 when they beat Alfonso Castellano and Nicholas Springer at the No. 2 position by the same score.
• Tous and Zupancic fought off match point to pull out a 9-8 (7-5) win at No. 1 to complete the sweep in their biggest win of the season.

SINGLES:

• Gomez, who owns the No. 18 singles ranking in the country, pushed the Bucs within a point of clinching after beating 21^st-ranked Lecoutre in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4, at the No. 1 position.
• Versier, the 48^th-ranked player in the country, clinched the title with a 6-2, 6-4 victory over 12th-ranked Bojadjiev at the No. 2 position.
• Larregina, the 68^th-ranked singles player, was leading Sanchez, 7-5, 2-1, at No. 3 singles when the verdict was in.
• West Florida picked up a set in the bottom three singles matches, two of them in tie-breakers.

NOTEWORTHY:

• Zupancic and Tous won their first match over nationally-ranked opponents.
• Gomez and Versier have won 15 in a row.
• Gomez improved to 5-3 versus ranked opponents and 3-1 at the No. 1 spot in the singles lineup.
• The Bucs swept pairs play for the ninth time this season and fifth time in the last seven matches.
• Barry won its second straight region championship and fifth in the last six seasons.

WHAT THEY'RE SAYING:

"I am extremely proud of my team to fight through all the adversity we had to deal with this season. We knew winning today, regardless of who we played, would be a struggle without one of our key players, but our guys rose to the occasion. I said a week ago, we needed to play our best tennis in order to keep moving on. Today, we were near our best, but the job is not finished yet."
            -- Barry head coach George Samuel


ON THE HORIZON:

Barry will meet 40th-ranked St. Edwards Wednesday in the Round of 16 at the NCAA Championships in Surprise, Ariz.

BOX SCORE