Griz sweep Idaho State Invitational

Friday, September 29

Pocatello, Idaho

All Day

Montana

Idaho State Invitational

10/2/2017 6:41:00 PM | Men's Tennis

FULL RESULTS

By: Montana Sports Information

Last April, the Montana men's tennis team was forced to play a man down as they made a run toward the Big Sky Conference Championship when Victor Casadevall suffered an ankle injury against Idaho State.

Casadevall and the Grizzlies seem to have had payback on their minds ever since.

Montana swept the Bank of Commerce Invitational in Pocatello over the weekend, winning not one, not two, but all three of the tournament's championship draws, and a consolation draw as well, to give the Griz four victories in four different brackets.

Casadevall won the tournament's premier singles draw (the orange "A" draw) in his first 100 percent healthy match back from last season's injury. Sophomore Max Korkh won the black "B" draw, and the powerhouse doubles partnership of Yannick Schmidl, and Alexander Canellopoulos won the doubles draw.

In the consolation bracket of the orange "A" draw, senior Ignacio Tejerina picked up the fourth victory of the weekend for the Griz.

Going into the weekend, none of the players on this year's Grizzly roster had ever won a fall tournament title. In fact, the entire Montana men's tennis program has seen very few fall victories in the program's history. But this weekend, the Griz picked up four wins in six possible brackets.

"We've got one goal, and this was a great first step," said interim head coach Jason Brown. "We're not going to be results-oriented in the fall, but that being said, results like that are always fantastic."

The doubles pairing of Schmidl and Canellopoulos knocked off teams from Montana State, Weber State, and Idaho State before powering through Idaho's No. 1 Kovacs/Netto pair 8-6 to reach the championship. There, they defeated Weber's strong Van Wyk/Cooper pairing 8-6 to claim the first title for the Griz.

Casadevall defeated opponents from Southern Utah and Idaho State, as well as two opponents from Weber before reaching the final. In the championship match, the Spaniard defeated Utah State standout Jose Fernando Carvajal 6-4, 6-4 to claim his first title as a Grizzly.

"Victor stepped up and got really aggressive, came forward a lot, and put his opponents under a lot of pressure," said Brown. "His level in the final was phenomenal. It was really fun to watch."

In the black "B" singles draw, Korkh swept past opponents from Idaho State Utah State and Weber State to reach the final against ISU's Francis Filipovich, who had defeated Montana's Ludvig Hallgren in a 6-4, 4-6, 11-9 marathon to reach the final against Korkh.

Korkh picked up the first tournament win of his young career with a 7-5, 6-2 victory over Filipovich in the championship.

After dropping his first match to Idaho's Guilherme Scarpelli in the orange "A" draw, Tejerina knocked off opponents from Montana State and two from Southern Utah to reach the final of the consolation draw.

"Nacho" then defeated ISU's Peter Trhac 6-3, 6-7 (2), 10-8 to claim Montana's fourth overall win on the weekend.

Montana will now take the confidence boost from those wins down to the Dar Walters Classic in Boise, Oct. 6-8, for the second of four fall tournaments on the Grizzlies' schedule.

"I think they'll have a little higher expectations for themselves now, and I think it will raise what they're satisfied with," said Brown.

"We couldn't be more pleased. We're going to get right back to work this week, there is a bunch of stuff we can improve on, so we'll get back after it and travel to Boise and try to do it again."

The Dar Walters was the site of one of Montana's only previous fall tournament wins when Zach Drost and Ethan Vaughn won the doubles championship 8-1 back in 2013.