Survive and Advance
No. 3 seed Ohio State kicked off its opening match of the 2017 NCAA Tournament with a 4-0 sweep of the Butler Bulldogs, punching its ticket to the second round with relative ease.
The match began with the Buckeyes taking the doubles point as the duo of Hunter Tubert and JJ Wolf swept their Bulldog counterparts and Hugo Di Feo and Martin Joyce downed their opponents 6-1.
In singles, the nation's No. 2 singles player Mikael Torpegaard and senior Herkko Pollanen allowed only one point while taking down their opponents in straight sets to give the Buckeyes a commanding three-point lead.
Redshirt freshman Kyle Seelig secured the sweep for the Bucks with his 6-1, 6-3 win over Butler's Ari Gerstein that gave the team a decisive 4-0 lead.
No. 46 Wolf struggled with an unseeded opponent in Butler's Mason Dragos but ultimately won his first set 7-5. The match ended while he was leading Dragos 3-2 in the second set.
No. 9 Di Feo also had some difficulty against Mikheil Khmiadashvil. He won the first set 6-2, but was only up 5-4 in the second set when the match came to an end.
Buckeyes down Butler 4-0 to advance to the second round of the NCAA Championship #GoBucks pic.twitter.com/0sOCWHJHiL
— Ohio State M Tennis (@OhioState_MTEN) May 12, 2017
Ohio State will face unseeded (No. 42 in ITA rankings) Louisville Saturday in the second round. A win against Louisville would put the Scarlet and Gray into the quarterfinals where they would face the winner of Mississippi State and No. 14 Oklahoma.
