Road Test Awaits Ducks
03/17/16 | Men's Tennis
Oregon will travel to Des Moines, Iowa for its final tune up before Pac-12 play opens Friday. The 30th-ranked Ducks will face-off with the 41st Bulldogs at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
The Ducks have won their last nine straight and are one win away from matching the best start in program history. However, Drake will be a stiff test as the Bulldogs are 12-6 on the season and 10-1 at home.
Drake has played spoiler against foes ranked higher than them, especially on its home court. The Bulldogs have earned upset victories over Purdue, Denver and Iowa in the past month.
The Ducks had several days off last week due to finals so this match will test Oregon before it host No. 5 UCLA in the conference-opener in Eugene.
IN THE RANKINGS
After sweeping Fresno State, 7-0, at home on March 12, Oregon fell ten spots in the March 15 team rankings, coming in at No. 30. Twice this year, the Ducks have been slotted as high as 20, which is the best in Oregon tennis history. No singles or doubles rankings were released so Daan Maasland remains at No. 70 in singles and doubles duo Jayson Amos and Armando Soemarno stay at No. 18.
DOMINANT IN DOUBLES
Coming into the 2016 dual-match season, head coach Nils Schyllander knew his team would be strong in doubles and his prediction has proven to be correct.
The Ducks have gone 23-8 in doubles during dual-match play and sport a 45-14 overall record, good for a .763 winning percentage. Jayson Amos and Armando Soemarno are riding a four-match winning streak and have gone 6-1 at the top spot this spring, moving them up to No. 18 in the ITA doubles rankings.
Daan Maasland and Simon Stevens boost a 12-2 record, competing a majority of the time at the No. 2 spot and rounding out the line-up is Cormac Clissold and Thomas Laurent who have won their last seven matches after dropping their first match together.
DUCKS FLYING HIGH
With a 13-1 record, the Ducks are off to one of the best starts in school history. The 2014 team went 14-1 in non-conference play and won 11 straight for the hottest start in Oregon tennis history. This year's team would pick up a win against the Bulldogs on Tuesday to match the record.
LAST TIME OUT
In the lone match of the weekend, the Ducks swept Fresno State, 7-0, winning their ninth straight match and remaining undefeated at home.
The Ducks earned their eighth consecutive doubles point with wins at Nos. two and three. Daan Maasland and Simon Stevens tallied the first triumph of the day with a 6-2 victory over Patrik Pech and Jakob Keppelmann at No. 2.
Cormac Clissold and Thomas Laurent clinched the point for the Ducks with a 6-1 win over Fresno State's Nikolas Papic and Youssef Hassan in the third spot. The win was Clissold and Laurent's seventh straight.
The Ducks carried their strong play into singles as they won in straight sets at all six spots. Jayson Amos scored the first singles point for Oregon in a 6-0, 6-1 drubbing of Nikolas Papic at No. 3 to claim his team-high ninth straight win.
Simon Stevens put the Bulldogs' backs against the wall with a 6-2, 6-1 win at No. 4 to stretch the Oregon lead to 3-0.
Bartosz Sawicki, a late addition to the Duck lineup, clinched the match for Oregon on No. 6. After taking the match's first set, 6-2, over Patrik Pech, Sawicki fell down, 4-1, in the second set. The senior stormed back, however, winning the next five games to take the match and seal up Oregon's 13th win of the season.
Shortly after Sawicki finished up, Thomas Laurent tallied a 6-1, 6-3 win in the second singles position to build on Oregon's lead.
No. 70 Daan Maasland won a second-set-deciding tiebreaker, 7-4, on No. 1 to wrap up his match in the top singles spot.
Cormac Clissold finished off the sweep for the Ducks, winning two tiebreakers to hold off Youssef Hassan, 7-6(5), 7-6(2) on No. 5.
MAASLAND COLLECTS CONFERENCE HONOR
For the first time in his career senior Daan Maasland was named the Pac-12 Player of the Week on March 7. It's the first time a Duck has been honored this season and Maasland garnered the award after he helped Oregon win its eighth straight match.
Maasland won both his singles and doubles matches handily against Minnesota last Friday. Maasland and partner Simon Stevens won 6-1 over Matic Spec and Jeremy Lynn at the No. 2 doubles spot, clinching the first point of the match in Oregon's favor. Maasland then followed that up with a 6-2, 6-3 win over Spec at the top spot in singles.
DUCKS MAKE HISTORY IN RANKINGS
In the Feb. 23 ITA team rankings, the Ducks were placed at No. 20, marking the highest ranking ever in program history. The last time Oregon was ranked in the Top 25 was on March 18, 2014 when the Ducks were slotted at No. 24. UO was ranked 37th in the Feb. 17 rankings and then earned two commanding wins over ranked opponents in Indiana and Boise State, propelling them up to No. 20.
“It's nice to see the fruits of our daily labor pay off,” head coach Nils Schyllander said. “But we will all need to stay focused and go about our daily grind with the same focus and intensity that we've been doing all year. The season is a marathon, not a sprint.”
A LOOK AT THE PAC-12
With conference play right around the corner, the Pac-12 once again is among one of the toughest conferences in the country. Five teams have been ranked in the Top 20 and all eight schools that sponsor men's tennis have been in the Top 75 at some point during the non-conference season.
Oregon boosts the best overall record in the conference at 13-1. Right behind the Ducks is Utah at 14-3 and No. 5 UCLA at 11-2. Arizona is the only team under .500 at this point in the season.
BUILDING BLOCKS OF SUCCESS
Now entering his 10th season at the helm of the Oregon men's tennis program, Nils Schyllander has elevated the Ducks to a new level of success. Since the Pac-10 became the Pac-12 in 2011, Schyllander's teams have gone 89-46 and won 66 percent of their matches. Last year's team finished fifth in the conference, the highest conference finish in 15 years.
This year, Schyllander hopes to build upon the success of past seasons and push his team to secure a post-season berth for the second time in three years.
