Tiebreaker ends men’s tennis hopes at SAC win vs Anderson
It was down to the wire between Carson-Newman and Anderson when the Trojans stole a win away from the Eagles in a third-set tiebreaker to take a 4-3 win on the Eagles' home court.
VIDEO: Nate Gangelhoff Interview
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – It was down to the wire between Carson-Newman and Anderson when the Trojans stole a win away from the Eagles in a third-set tiebreaker to take a 4-3 win on the Eagles' home court.
"I think it was the most amount of team energy and team fight that we've had all year," said head coach Nate Gangelhoff. "I told them that that was what was going to be needed and that was going to be required to win this match or to give us our fighting chance and we gave it our best shot."
This moves the men to 4-9 on the season and lets Anderson reach double-digit wins in the 2025-26 season.
"There's there's just moments where we're still missing. You know we're not clicking, we're not having the right maybe strategies or we're not having the right mentality of trying to break when the opportunity could be there for us to break," said Gangelhoff.
In doubles, Darko Kolevski and Wade Donovan used good energy to topple the Trojans' third doubles pair in a 6-3 decision. Unfortunately, the rest of the lineup couldn't find a win. Leonard Baecker and Yassin Ali had a three-match win streak at second doubles snapped with a 6-2 loss, while Max Stollecker and Louis Keenan fell 6-3 at the top line.
"Our doubles wasn't the best today and I think that was a little disappointing," said Gangelhoff. "I knew that doubles was going to be tough and that may have been the decider and that's exactly what it was."
Darko Kolevski continued to deliver in singles. The sophomore took down Anderson's Hamp Golfman 6-1, 6-2 for his second singles win of the season.
With the match tied 1-1, Louis Keenan dropped to 3-7 in singles, falling 6-3, 6-3 at the first line, giving Anderson the edge.
C-N quickly knotted the match at 2-2 when Max Stollecker cruised through Vincent Fenollar, who had eight wins in singles. Stollecker has been the most successful player in singles this season for Carson-Newman at 6-3 in solo play.
The Eagles took the edge in the match when the freshman Yassin Ali paved out a 6-2, 6-4 win at the fourth singles spot. Ali is now 3-5 in singles after the win.
"Very proud of Yassin. He really locked in mentally and as a younger player, as a freshman that's hard to do when you're so young and there's so much pressure," said Gangelhoff. "This was his best match doing that and I really believe that's what allowed him to win."
The Trojans tied it back up when Wade Donovan fell at six singles. Donovan beat his opponent 6-1 in set one, but lost 6-2, 6-3 in the following sets.
It came down to the captain, Leonard Baecker at third singles. Baecker had won the first set over Wynn Shioi 6-4, but lost set two 6-1. Baecker battled back from at least a game deficit to push the match into extras. In the tiebreak, Baecker was up 5-3, but Eagle hearts were broken and Shioi mounted a comeback to collect an 8-6 win.
In conference action, the Eagles are 2-4 and will have another chance this week to collect another SAC win when the #24 Wingate Bulldogs visit Jefferson City on Saturday.
First serve against the Bulldogs is scheduled for 11:00 AM at the Buddy Catlett Tennis Complex. For updates, follow @CN_Eagles on X and Instagram, or check cneagles.com for full coverage.
