Montana
North Dakota
Griz dominate in Grand Forks
3/8/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
The pieces are starting to fall into place for coach Kris Nord and his Montana Grizzy tennis team. Sunday morning, they swept North Dakota 7-0 in Grand Forks en route to their third consecutive victory.
The match started early in the morning, 8 a.m. to be exact, the day after clocks moved forward at the start of Daylight Saving Time. The Griz (3-4/3-1 BSC) arrived in Grand Forks late Friday after playing in Greeley, Colo., Thursday but managed the quick turnaround well.
"We talked about the fact that this is the last part of a road trip," said assistant coach Jason Brown. "We got here late last night and had to play early this morning. We told these guys to just go to work. North Dakota is a much-improved team from last year, and we told our guys not to give them any hope."
North Dakota (3-5/0-3 BSC) was playing for the third consecutive day. They were defeated 6-1 by Montana State on Saturday.
The Griz, who entered this road-trip without claiming a doubles point in their first five matches, swept the doubles competition for the second time on the road trip. It all started up top with the doubles pair of Tomasz Soltyka and Peter Mimnagh-Fleming, according to Brown.
"I thought that number one double's of Soltyka and Fleming came out, broke right away and just sort of rolled through and it felt like we had some momentum," he said.
After the sweep of doubles, Montana's veterans came out and made sure Montana was leaving North Dakota with a win. They made quick work of their opponents and clinched the match 4-0 before Montana's freshmen stepped onto the courts.
"The top three spots in singles raced through their matches," Brown said. "Not many matches lasted more than a half hour. Branzburg at No. 2 won 0 and 0, and he actually wasn't the first guy off the court."
The bottom half of the line-up secured the sweep for Montana. The loss dropped North Dakota to 0-3 in the Big Sky, but they weren't viewed as an easy win coming in to the match.
"These guys have won some matches for North Dakota; these are not just roll over matches," Brown said. "They played Montana State tough yesterday, much tougher than they looked against our guys because we didn't overlook anybody and we played really, really well."
The win sets Montana up for a month-long home stand. They will play five conference matches in Missoula over the course of the next month. Brown said getting a couple road wins under their belt before coming home was crucial.
"It definitely sets things up for our conference schedule," he said. "Getting wins on the road in the Big Sky, the conference has gotten a lot tougher, so any road wins really build momentum coming into this home stand."
The Grizzlies will be back in action in just three days time, on March 11 at the Peak in Missoula. They will take on the Southern Utah Thunderbirds at 2 p.m.
UM 7, UND 0
Singles competition
1. Soltyka, Tomasz (UM) def. BRITTON, Dustin (UND) 6-1, 6-0
2. Branzburg, Semion (UM) def. OBERLE, Connor (UND) 6-0, 6-0
3. MIMNAGH-FLEMING, P (UM) def. BERGSTROM, David (UND) 6-2, 6-2
4. Casadevall, Victor (UM) def. LEE, Joe (UND) 7-6 (7-3), 6-2
5. Rudenco, Alexandr (UM) def. DANYLUK, Simon (UND) 6-2, 6-4
6. Schmidl, Yannick (UM) def. MISIALEK, Ty (UND) 6-3, 6-3
Doubles competition
1. SOLTYKA/MIMNAGH-FLEMING (UM) def. OBERLE/BERGSTROM (UND) 6-2
2. BRANZBURG/SCHMIDL (UM) def. BRITTON/DANYLUK (UND) 6-3
3. CASADEVALL/FISHER, Zach (UM) def. FUKA, Matt/OOTHOUDT, Hunter (UND) 6-4
Players Mentioned
