Over the weekend, No. 8 Stanford men’s tennis won the ACC tournament, defeating No. 6 Virginia 4-2 in the championship match.
Stanford dropped the doubles point as Nico Godsick/Hudson Rivera were the only Stanford pair to win their set. In singles, Stanford came back to life. Samir Banerjee benefited from his opponent Rafael Jodar defaulting as 3-6, 5-3, def. was the final score. That gave Stanford their first singles point. Alex Razeghi was next to finish his match for the Cardinal, defeating Janqiun Kim 6-1, 7-6 (3) to put Stanford up 2-1. Henry von der Schulenburg then won his match, defeating James Hopper 6-3, 6-3 to make it 3-1. Dylan Dietrich of Virginia then won his match, defeating Kyle Kang 7-6, 6-2 to make it 3-2. In need of only winning one of their final two matches, Stanford closed it out 4-2 as Max Basing defeat Keegan Rice 7-5, 6-2.
BOX SCORE: Stanford vs. Virginia-Sunday, April 20th
Stanford previously defeated Florida State 4-3 and Duke 4-2 to advance to the championship round. It wasn’t an easy week of tennis by any means, but the Cardinal found a way to dig deep and win the tournament. For Stanford, this is a huge win as they look to keep their momentum going into the NCAA tournament all while getting an opportunity to host the first two rounds of the tournament at least.
All season long, Stanford has done a great job of having different guys step up. There’s a lot of depth on this team and anyone is capable of winning their match. That takes a lot of pressure off each individual match as they know if they come up short in their match, odds are good their teammates will have their back.
Big picture, it’s cool for Stanford athletics to have a program win an ACC tournament. It shows that even with the challenge of having to compete against teams across the country, success is still possible in the ACC. This championship should inspire other teams on campus to step up their game in the ACC as well.
Up next for Stanford is the NCAA tournament. The NCAA tournament selection show is Monday, April 28th at 2:00 PM PT.
CardinalSportsReport.com on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), & Blue Sky: @StanfordRivals
Ben Parker on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), YouTube, & Blue Sky: @slamdunk406
Email: slamdunk406@yahoo.com
