Tennis is an individual sport by nature, but UCLA fell apart
collectively on Tuesday at crosstown rival USC.
After taking four of the first six singles sets and the first
two points of the match, the Bruins collapsed, falling 5-2 to the
17th -ranked Trojans.
“We really let them off the hook badly,” UCLA coach
Billy Martin said. “It’s inexcusable.”
The Bruin collapse came without any warning. UCLA’s
Benjamin Kohlloeffel led 4-1 in the second set against Drew Hoskins
on Court 2 and had a pair of break points. He then lost the next 10
games.
Phillip Gruendler and Kris Kwinta both cruised through their
first sets, but crumbled thereafter.
Alberto Francis led 4-1 in the third set, but untimely double
faults and unforced errors allowed the Trojans to clinch the match
for themselves.
“I can’t believe it,” a dumbfounded
Kohlloeffel said. “This guy (Hoskins) isn’t even good.
My whole game just broke down completely. I don’t know if I
had a game like that in my whole life before.”
Going into the match, UCLA (12-2) and USC (6-5) appeared to be
heading in opposite directions. The Bruins, coming off a weekend
sweep over the Bay Area schools, had dropped just one match this
season. The Trojans had lost five of their last seven matches,
including a 5-2 loss to Stanford on Saturday.
With the Bruins winning the doubles point and Chris Lam scoring
a decisive straight-set victory on Court 4 for UCLA, all signs
seemed to indicate the rivals would continue on their divergent
paths.
But then the match took an abrupt turn. When Hoskins roared back
to take the second set off Kohlloeffel, it reinvigorated a USC
crowd that seemed to have resigned itself to defeat. After Adam
Loucks put the Trojans on the scoreboard with his win over
Gruendler on Court 6, the wave of momentum immediately rolled over
onto the Stadium Courts.
“Guys start believing they can come back,” Martin
said. “We just have to learn that when you get ahead, you
have to keep working hard and doing the things that got you to that
point. You don’t relax.”
The Bruins tensed as the crowd grew more boisterous and the
Trojans rallied. Francis served two double faults, one on game
point, to allow USC’s Kaes Van’t Hof to tie the third
set at 4-4. Later Francis hit a pair of unforced errors in the
final and decisive game, causing the crowd to erupt in a brief
“˜overrated’ chant after match point.
“Maybe our guys got a little tight with the crowd and
all,” Martin said. “But (Francis and Kohlloeffel) are
two experienced players and I’m very surprised to see them
kind of let it go.”
Once USC had clinched the win, Luben Pampoulov, who was playing
with a pinched nerve in his neck, decided to retire.