Griz hold on to beat North Dakota and sweep road trip

Sunday, February 25

Grand Forks, N.D.

2:30 PM (MT)

Montana

North Dakota

Griz hold on to beat North Dakota and sweep road trip

2/25/2024 8:00:00 PM | Men's Tennis

Box Score

By: Montana Sports Information

They had to work for it, but the Montana men's tennis team completed a weekend sweep in Grand Forks with a 4-3 win over the hometown North Dakota Fighting Hawks on Sunday.

In a tense match from start to finish, the Griz earned a win in doubles and bult a lead early in the singles round. North Dakota would fight back, however, taking wins at the top of the lineup to leave Montana's Moritz Stoeger to clinch for the Grizzlies on court five in a third set.

Montana improves to 7-1 on the season after beating UND and Marquette in Grand Forks over the weekend. The Fighting Hawks fall to 3-10.

"D-I wins on the road are tough. It's just hard to win on the road, and North Dakota really showed up, competed really well at every spot, and just didn't go away. They were down big in a couple of the matches and just battled back at home," said head coach Jason Brown.

"You could feel the energy shift and the home crowd made it really tricky for us, but I'm proud of the way our guys fought. They showed a lot of heart. We know we need to keep getting better, but this win is going to help us improve for the future."

Montana opened the match with a 1-0 lead after a pair of doubles wins on courts three and one, clinching the opening point before UND had a chance to make the Griz sweat it out while trailing on court two.

Stoeger and Baltazar Wiger-Nordas eased to a 6-1 win on court three to open the scoring for UM while courts one and two looked like they could go either way.

The Spaniard duo of Fernando Perez and Guillermo Martin would eventually grind out a 6-4 win on court one to clinch the doubles point for UM just as UND took a commanding lead on court two.

Similarly in singles, Montana earned straight set wins on court six from Chris Zhang and three from Tom Bittner to pull ahead, but UND made it too close for comfort with wins on courts one and two that cut UM's lead to 3-2.

With the deciding two matches each going to a third set, Stoeger was able to bounce back from a second set loss in a tiebreaker to win in the third and clinch the match for UM.

That win took the pressure off Martin, who put in a heroic effort in a second set tiebreaker to force a third, buying time for Stoeger but eventually falling on court four to make it a 4-3 final in favor of the Griz.

"For me, the MVP's of this match didn't win. We were down 5-0 in doubles at number two and found a way to stay on the court and have it go unfinished. That kept the pressure off number one as they wrapped it up and we won the doubles point," added Brown.

"Same thing in singles. We were up 3-2 and Guillermo saves six match points to win the second set to keep all the pressure off the final court. It's really tough when you're on the road to clinch a match if you're the last guy. It gets loud and rowdy in there and it's so much more pressure. So instead, Mo (Stoeger) clinches pretty easily in the third knowing there's still another match alive and we had another crack at it."

Montana now prepares to return to take on a team from the Summit League, this time taking on the conference leaders Denver University in the Mile High City on March 1. The Griz cap their final nonconference trip of the season with a neutral site dual against Wichita State at DU on March 2.