The Gustavus men’s tennis team advanced to the championship match of the NCAA Regional with a convincing 5-0 win over UW-Whitwater on Saturday afternoon at the Swanson Tennis Center on the Gustavus campus. The Gusties will face Luther College on Sunday at noon. The Norse upset the University of Texas-Tyler by the score of 5-4 on Saturday to advance to the team finals.
The Gusties took control of the match by winning all three doubles matches and taking a 3-0 lead heading into singles play. John Kauss and Mike Burdakin defeated Kelvin Caiati and Alex Lowe 8-3 at the #1 position and Charlie Paukert and Ben Tomasek defeated Erich Palecek and Danny Glinert 8-3 at the #2 position, but the #3 doubles was a real battle and Nick Hansen and Kevin Stickney had to go to a tiebreaker before defeating Tim Moller and Erik Scanlan 9-8 (7-0).
In singles play, John Kauss defeated Alex Lowe 6-1, 6-0 at the #1 position and Nick Hansen defeated Alex Morey 6-4, 6-3 at the #6 position to give the Gusties the five points necessary to close out the match.
The win was the eighth straight win for the Gusties who improved to 26-8 on the season.
The winner of Sunday’s regional final between Gustavus and Luther will advance to the NCAA Team Championship Finals on May 19-21 at the Biszantz Family Tennis Center in Claremont, Calif. on the campus of the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges.