After losses on Courts 1 through 3 and looking dead in the water, No. 13 NC State men’s tennis staved off Princeton with three-straight singles victories to win 4-3.
Despite having taken the doubles point and a 1-0 lead early, NC State (6-1) was on the verge of being upset at home by Princeton (5-3). The Pack’s top players have struggled to this point in the season, and that trend continued as No. 11 senior Martin Borisiouk, No. 69 redshirt sophomore Jules Leroux and freshman Ainius Sabaliauskas each fell one by one on the top three courts. But coming up clutch, the bottom of NC State’s lineup stood tall, each needing to secure a win to keep the match alive.
“As long as there was life and hope in the match, I just went out there and thought ‘I’m just going to do my best and give everything,’ and where there’s life, there’s hope,” said No. 114 freshman Charlie Camus, who won in straight sets on Court 5. “ … there was still a lot of belief in the team that we could do it.”
The first NC State player to stave off defeat was No. 88 sophomore William Carrier, who battled No. 97 Sebastian Sec through a three-set match after dropping the first frame 6-1. He stormed back to win the next two sets 6-2, 6-1, showing the composure he has shown all season and extending his win streak to five, having only lost in the first match of the season versus Campbell.
“All of a sudden, you look up and Willie’s battling for us to stay in the match, so good job by him to right the ship,” said head coach Kyle Spencer. “Pretty rough first set for [Manning], and he walked it down and figured out tactically what he wanted to do and kept his calm.”
Camus won in straight sets, but it didn’t come easily to him. His opponent, Milan Markovitz, was pounding a threatening serve in his direction and forcing him to play very defensively on the return. But Camus picked his spots and attacked the weaker backhand of Markovitz to secure the win with an 8-6 tiebreak in the first set, and took the second in dominant fashion 6-1.
“Charlie came in, the guy was serving 140s, and he just held serve, held serve, held serve and had a chance,” Spencer said. “He got a break to serve for the set and just didn’t play the game that he wanted to and got into the buster and did a good job in the buster and ran him after that.”
With Camus tying the match 3-3, it was all up to fellow freshman Darius Pop, with all eyes on him. Pop took a beating in his first set 6-2, and was on the verge of defeat as Set 2 went to a tie-break. But after taking the tie-break 7-3, Pop completely flipped the script and punished Princeton’s Aleksandar Mitric 6-0 to secure the victory for NC State.
With Borisiouk falling 6-4, 6-4 to No. 7 Paul Inchauspe — a tough opponent even for a man who made it to the NCAA Singles Championship semifinals in the fall — NC State needed other guys to step up. Maybe it wasn’t from the top of the lineup, but that is what it got.
“We’ve got some spots where we’ve got big heart, and we’ve got areas where we need to improve,” Spencer said. “It’s a young season with a young team … Now we got to go on the road and play a very good Harvard team. We gotta have seven spots against them, and we didn’t have that today, but we had four, and that ended up being enough.”
With a quick turnaround, NC State heads up north to face another Ivy League opponent in Harvard on Sunday, Feb. 8, at 12 p.m.
