No. 2 Virginia Faces No. 3 Ohio State in NCAA Semifinals

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May 21, 2017

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – The No. 2 Virginia men’s tennis team (32-1) continues its NCAA team title defense by taking on No. 3 Ohio State (33-3) in the semifinals of the 2017 NCAA Men’s Tennis Championships on Monday, May 22 at 10 a.m. at the Henry Felid Courts at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex in Athens, Ga.

Please note the time change for this match. The match was originally scheduled for noon but moved up to 10 a.m. because of the threat of inclement weather.

Live scoring and video for the matches will be available with the links posted on VirginiaSports.com. The winner will advance to the NCAA Men’s Tennis Championship title match, which will take place on Tuesday, May 23 at 1 p.m., taking on either 13-seed Georgia or 9-seed North Carolina. The final will be televised on ESPNU. Virginia has advanced to the NCAA Championship match in five of the last six seasons and has won three of the last four NCAA titles (2013, 15, 16).

The Cavaliers advanced to the NCAA semifinals for the eighth-straight year, the longest streak in the modern age (since 1977). Stanford twice had five-year streaks of making the Final Four, going every year from 1988-92 and 1994-98, but fell in the 1993 quarterfinals.

Senior JC Aragone (Yorba Linda, Calif.) has clinched the last two matches for the Cavaliers. Aragone was also the MVP of the ACC Championship after clinching the win over Wake Forest in the finals. Aragone leads the Cavaliers with 35 singles victories this season and a team-high 25 wins in dual matches but was the only Cavalier in the singles lineup to not be named to the All-ACC Team. Aragone is on a nine-match winning streak.

Junior Collin Altamirano (Sacramento, Calif.), who clinched the Cavaliers’ first and second round matches in Charlottesville, comes into the semifinals on a team-best 11-match win streak. His last loss was on March 31, falling in straight sets to Wake Forest’s Skander Mansouri. He is one of two Cavaliers competing in the NCAA singles championship.

The Cavaliers won the doubles point in 29 of 33 matches this season. UVA dropped the doubles point in their first two matches of the season (at Vanderbilt and Kentucky) and then won it in 15 straight before being topped by Wake Forest in doubles in the regular season. North Carolina also took the doubles point in their regular-season match against the Cavaliers but lost the point in the ACC semis.

Seniors Thai-Son Kwiatkowski (Charlotte, N.C.) and Alexander Ritschard (Zurich, Switzerland) are 23-1 this season as a doubles team. Their only loss this season came in the regular-season meeting against North Carolina when they fell to Jack Murray and Simon Soendergaard. Altamirano Aragone are 20-3 in doubles this season. Both doubles teams are 10-0 in their last 10 matches.

Ohio State battled for a 4-3 victory over TCU on Saturday in a match that lasted 1:20 longer than the Cavaliers’. Hugo Di Feo won the deciding match at No. 4 singles, coming back from down two breaks in the final set. Ohio State won its Round of 16 match against Oklahoma, 4-3, with that match being decided by a tiebreaker in the third set by JJ Wolf on court two.

Virginia and Ohio State faced one another in the final of the ITA National Indoor Championship in February with UVA edging the Buckeyes, 4-1, to win the title for the sixth time in program history. Only two of the singles matchups from that meeting will be the same in the NCAA’s. Aragone will again face Herkko Pollanen and junior Henrik Wiersholm (Kirkland, Wash.) will face Kyle Seelig for a second time. Wiersholm downed Seelig 7-6 (2), 6-2 while Aragone clinched the victory with a 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4) win over Pollanen.

Virginia is 8-4 all-time against the Buckeyes. Ohio State’s last win over UVA came in the semifinals of the 2014 National Team Indoor Championships.