Results
MOBILE, Ala. — On its fifth try in as many years, Xavier
University of Louisiana men's tennis finally broke the barrier.
The Gold Rush, ranked and seeded third, defeated No. 6 Keiser 5-3
Thursday in the NAIA National Championship to become the first XU men's team in any sport
to reach the national semifinals.
Xavier is 16-7, and Keiser finished 20-4.
"We've been playing a lot of tough matches recently," said senior
Kyle Montrel, one of two Gold Rush players to win in doubles and singles. "All the guys have
been fighting hard. We know we can win. This year we believe it, so we're going for it."
Xavier will play No. 7 Lindsey Wilson, a 5-3 winner against No. 2
Auburn Montgomery, at 1 p.m. Friday. Two-time defending champion Georgia Gwinnett will meet No. 5
Dalton State in the other semifinal at that same time. The championship will start at 1 p.m. Saturday.
All matches are at Copeland-Cox Mobile Tennis Center, and admission is free.
Montrel and
Karan Salwan scored the first point of the dual when they
defeated Martin Martins and Guilherme Cunha 8-1. Montrel made it 4-3 when he defeated Rafael Lenz
6-4, 6-1 on the third singles court.
Xavier's other double winner was freshman
Thomas Setodji, who teamed
with
Kevin Chaouat for an 8-6 victory against Lenz and Shaquille Taylor, then clinched for the
second consecutive day — approximately three minutes after Montrel's victory — with his 6-0, 6-4
decision against Martins. Setodji is 16-0 in singles and has clinched half of Xavier's victories and
seven of the last 10.
Xavier's other point came from
Tushar Mandlekar, who avenged a
third-set super-tiebreaker loss to Taylor during the regular season with a 6-1, 6-0 victory on the
fifth court. It was his first singles victory since March 22 — between victories there were seven losses
and three unfinished matches.
Why the reversal of fortune against Taylor? "I changed racket brands about
two weeks ago," said Mandlekar, a junior who is 5-0 in singles in three appearances at nationals.
"I'm playing much better since I switched."
In addition to four consecutive quarterfinal losses in tennis, Gold Rush
basketball lost in the 1973 quarterfinals. Women's tennis earned Xavier its first semifinal berth in 2013 and
reached that round again in 2014.
"I wasn't really thinking about the round, just the opponents we play,"
13th-year coach
Alan Green said. "It was a tough match with Keiser. It was tougher than when we played
them earlier in the season (a 7-2 XU victory), but our guys pulled through."
