Montana beats Marquette to open road swing

Saturday, February 24

Grand Forks, N.D.

3:30 PM (MT)

Montana

Marquette

Fernando Perez returns a serve during a set of a doubles tennis match against the Whitworth Pirates at the PEAK Racquet Club on January 20, 2024 in Missoula, Montana.

Photo by: Tanner Ecker/University of Montana

2/24/2024 8:20:00 PM | Men's Tennis

Box Score

By: Montana Sports Information

The Montana men's tennis team opened its two match road trip to North Dakota with a 5-2 neutral site win over the Marquette Golden Eagles on Saturday afternoon at Choice Health and Fitness in Grand Forks.

The Griz clinched the opening doubles point and won four of the six singles matches with their only two losses coming in tiebreakers to improve to 6-1 on the season. Marquette falls to 2-8 after also losing to North Dakota 5-2 on Friday.

"Marquette competed really hard but we're going to have to up our level against North Dakota tomorrow on their home courts," said head coach Jason Brown.

"A neutral D-I win is always nice though, and Marquette has had a great program for a long time. So, we'll take the win, learn from it, and hopefully come out more focused tomorrow."

The Griz opened the match with two wins in the doubles round to clinch the point.

Moritz Stoeger and Baltazar Wiger-Nordas improved to 4-1 on the year as a partnership with an easy 6-1 win over Nathan Balthazor and Teddy Wong. Tom Bittner and Chris Zhang then clinched the point for UM with a 6-3 win on court two, putting the Griz up 1-0 early on.

Fernando Perez continued his stellar start to the year, moving to 6-1 this season with a 6-2, 6-2 win over Tin Krstulovic to put UM up 2-0 overall.

Zhang got his second win of the day soon after, beating Balthazor in straight sets 6-1, 6-4 to extend Montana's lead 3-0. Bittner then clinched the overall match for the Griz with another win in straight sets, beating Jan Jauch 6-2, 6-4, to stay undefeated this season at 6-0 and put UM up for good in the team score 4-0.

Wiger-Nordas couldn't overcome a slow start on court one, winning a second set before losing in a tiebreaker 2-6, 6-3, 1-0 (7), for UM's first loss of the day.

Freshman Dragos Bucurescu also played a tiebreaker but won his extra frame, beating Ivan Vasquez 7-5, 7-6 (4) on court six to put the Griz up 5-1.

Stoeger ran into a white-hot Jasper Schaadt and lost in three sets in the final match of the day 4-6, 6-4, 7-5, to make the final score 5-2 in favor of the Griz.

Montana returns to action against North Dakota Sunday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. its final dual of the weekend.