UK tennis takes care of Radford to advance
to second round of NCAA Tournament

The UK men’s tennis team has lofty goals for the NCAA tournament.

But before the Wildcats could try and reach their first Final Four, they had to take care of business versus Radford in the first round Friday.

Radford proved no match for the No. 6 Wildcats in a 4-0 win. The Wildcats were glad to get the first win out of the way.

“It’s not break-your-back hot or cramping hot, but it’s hot so you want to get out and get the match under your belt and get off and get rested,” said UK head coach Dennis Emery. “Especially because the NCAA rule is that the home team has to play second. So you’re automatically playing on less rest than the other team.”

UK will face Indiana in the second round on Saturday at 2 p.m at the Hillary J. Boone Tennis Center. UK earned a 7-0 win versus Indiana in an indoor match in January.

“We played Indiana earlier and it’s a completely different match,” Emery said. “The thing about those early season matchups is that you play them indoors so you’re playing on, now, a different surface.”

UK’s No. 1 doubles pair — senior Eric Quigley and sophomore Panav Jha and No. 3 doubles pair — sophomore Tom Jomby and sophomore Alejandro Gomez — wins to give UK its first point. Quigley, Gomez and junior Anthony Rossi and earned singles wins to give UK the 4-0 win.

The Wildcats did not drop a set in the match, but Emery said his squad has plenty of room for improvement.

“I think we really have to pick it up tomorrow if we’re going to be the team in the post season that we want to be,” he said. “We’ve been the team that we wanted to be all year. I didn’t see quite that same intensity today. That’s a concern.

“We want to get back to where we have that momentum and we feel like we’re out working the other teams and out competing the other teams. Today I felt like we tried to rely a little bit too much on our talent. It’s not something that we generally do as a program.”