As expected, the No. 1 ranked and No. 1 seeded Ohio State men’s tennis team advanced past Cleveland State Friday to move on to the second round of the 2019 NCAA Men’s Tennis Tournament. And also as expected, the Buckeyes did it in easy fashion, disposing of the the Vikings 4-0 by taking the doubles point and then sweeping through the singles matches. Ohio State had already defeated Cleveland State earlier this year in a doubleheader to open the season — winning back-to-back contests 5-0 and 4-0.
Cleveland State actually put a scare into the Buckeyes during the doubles contest. John McNally and Hunter Tubert won easily 6-3, but the other two matches both went to tie-breakers. J.J. Wolf and Martin Joyce lost their tiebreaker 6-8 to even things up, and despite being down, Kyle Seelig and Alex Kobelt were able to battle back to win theirs 7-6 (2) to give OSU the hotly contested doubles point, for a 1-0 lead in the team scoring.
From there, Seelig, Kobelt, and Martin Joyce won their singles matches easily to wrap things up for the Buckeyes and finish things off early.
Ohio State will now prepare for the Vanderbilt Commodores who outlasted Notre Dame 4-3 earlier in the day. The match will take place at 1:00 PM Saturday at the Ohio State Outdoor Varsity Tennis Center.
