TULSA, Okla. – South Alabama men's tennis juniors Loic Cloes and Clement Marzol advanced to the round of 16 in doubles with a victory Thursday (Oct. 4) night in Tulsa, Okla., at the Saint Francis Health System ITA All-American Championships after each fell in singles in the morning session.
 
Round Of 32 Doubles
No. 6 Cloes and Marzol faced off against Alastair Grey and Reese Stalder of TCU. Each pairing had a pair of breakpoints and held serves as the score sat at 4-4 in the opening set. After a break of serve, Cloes served out the set as the Jags took the first 6-4.
 
In a déjà vu set of circumstances as the first, each pairing had broken each other's serve twice as the score was tied 4-4 in the second set. Each team held its service as they headed to a tiebreak. The Jags came out on the wrong end of the tiebreak as TCU took the set 7-6 (9-7).
 
The third set was a first to 10 win by two tiebreaker. Both pairings had a hard time holding serve, but the Jags were up 9-7 and serving for the match. TCU took the point, but South broke their serve the next point to win the set 10-8 and take the match.
 
Round Of 64 Singles
No. 83 Cloes fell to Florida's No. 20 Oliver Crawford 6-3, 6-4.
 
No. 122 Marzol dropped his match to No. 31 Daniel Cukierman of USC 6-0, 7-5.

THEY SAID IT
Head Coach Nick Brochu
On the day: "It was a tough day. Things didn't click for our guys. Loic had an injury to his upper leg which kept him from serving hard, his main weapon. He fought hard, but couldn't come up with the important points. Clem had a weird match. He couldn't feel the ball and made tons of unforced errors. Overall, it was a very up-and-down match, losing the first set quickly, then dominated for four games and lost seven of the last eight games. Both players had problems serving all day. It continued in doubles. We returned well, but struggled holding serves all match. TCU came back strong at the end, but we kept messing up our leads and couldn't close the match. Too many unforced errors and bad decisions kept us from closing the match in quick two sets. We need to fix our serves and reduce the errors if we want to go far in this tournament. "
 
UP NEXT
Cloes and Marzol will square off against Oklahoma State's Mathieu Scaglia and Matej Vocel in the doubles round of 16.
 
Cloes drew No. 37 Alastair Grey of TCU in the first round of consolation singles, while Marzol will face Texas A&M's Barnaby Smith, who defeated Cloes in the qualifying singles round.
 
—USA—