Griz set wins record, beat Hornets in Big Sky Tourney

Thursday, April 24

Phoenix, Ariz.

9 AM (MT)

Montana

Sacramento State

Griz set wins record, beat Hornets in Big Sky Tourney

4/24/2025 3:17:00 PM | Men's Tennis

Box Score

By: Montana Sports Information

PHOENIX - The Montana men's tennis team set a new program record for wins in a season with its 17^th of the year on Thursday as the Griz defeated Sacramento State 4-0 in the first round of the Big Sky Conference Championship Tournament.

In a closer-than-the-score-would-indicate dual, the three-seed Griz claimed the doubles point over the sixth-seed Hornets and took singles wins on courts five, two, and three in a match played to clinch in the quarterfinal round of the conference tourney at the Phoenix Tennis Center.

"I thought it was an A-plus effort from our guys. It's never going to be easy at the Big Sky Conference tournament. There's a lot of parity in the league. It was 4-0 on paper, but that was a tight, well played, hard fought match. I thought their team came out ready to take it to us, but our guys were worthy of the task today for sure," said head coach Jason Brown.

Montana improved to 17-6 on the season and is now riding a three-match shutout win streak, with UM's opponents having not won a match since April 4. Sacramento State's season comes to a close at 10-12 on the year.

In doubles, UM's freshman duo cruised to the Grizzlies' first win with a 6-1 victory over the Hornets' Duris/Whitehead pair on court three. Tom Bittner and Eivind Tandberg then clinched the point with a 6-2 win over the Bowles/Rand pair to stop play while UM's Perez/Wiger-Nordas pair was locked in a 5-4 battle on court one. The win put UM up 1-0 in the team score heading to singles.

Perez, this year's Grizzly team captain, made it a 2-0 team score in short order with 6-3, 6-2, win on court five over Hayden Rand, who had clearly been hobbled by injury. Montana would't have it as easy on the other five courts though.

Sac State came out firing and won three first sets on the remaining matches to steal momentum from the Griz coming out of doubles.

Baltazar Wiger-Nordas then won a second-set tiebreaker 6-4, 7-6 (2), over Gur Libal on court two, wrestling the momentum back for the Griz and putting UM up 3-0 in the team score.

Meanwhile Big Sky Freshman of the Year Duncan McCall found himself down a break early in both of his sets but managed to fight his way back for a 7-5, 7-5, win over Nick Bowles on court three to clinch the team victory for UM at 4-0.

It was a gutsy fend-off of the Hornet's upset bid as the remaining three matches were all headed to a third set when play stopped.

"I think these guys really love each other and they play as a team. There are no individuals out there. You can tell they all really care about each other and the outcome, and it proved to be the difference today," said Brown.

"I think the tennis level was fairly close. Sac is an outdoor, sunshine team and we haven't played much outdoors this season. So, I'm really proud of how we just sort of put a stranglehold on them and made it tough for them to get out. On to the next one."

Montana now advances to the Big Sky semifinal for the 18^th time in program history on Friday and will face No. 2 seed Idaho State at 8 a.m. PT, 9 a.m. MT. The Griz dropped a narrow 4-3 loss to the Bengals in Pocatello earlier this season.

Fourth-seed Idaho defeated five-seed Weber State in the other quarterfinal match of the day, with the Vandals now advancing on to face No. 1 seed Northern Arizona on Friday morning as well. The winner of the two semifinals will meet in the conference championship on Saturday.

Links to live scoring of the semifinal can be found at GoGriz.com.