TENNIS NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT : Tennessee Rally Topples UCLA, 5-4

UCLA was up 4-2 in singles play over Tennessee Monday and needed to win only one of three doubles matches for a semifinal victory and its first NCAA finals appearance since 1987.

Tennessee won the first doubles match. And the second. And, on what suddenly had become center court at Hyatt Grand Champions, UCLA’s Bill Behrens and Robbie Wendell and Tennessee’s Brice Karsh and Fabio Silberberg split the first two sets and tied the third at six games, forcing a tiebreaker.

By then the sun was down. The lights were on. Tennessee led the tiebreaker, 6-5, with UCLA’s Behrens serving. Fault. Double fault.

Tennessee 5, UCLA 4.

The last time the Volunteers made it this far in the NCAA tournament was in 1987, when UCLA beat them in the semifinals and went on to win the championship.

Today, Tennessee (34-0) will make its first appearance in the NCAA finals when it meets two-time defending champion Stanford at 2 p.m. Stanford defeated USC, 5-3, in the early semifinal.

“The dream goes on,” Tennessee Coach Mike DePalmer said. “I never dreamed we would be where we are, but we were down 4-2 in singles and we still did it. It’s unbelievable. It’s as good a team effort as I’ve ever seen.”

The team’s success, though, doesn’t surprise Tennessee’s Karsh. In January, in a published report, Karsh predicted his team would meet Stanford in the finals. But he wouldn’t go so far as to predict today’s champion.

“I just thought that Tennessee and Stanford were the two best teams in the country,” Karsh said. “We don’t have fantastic players. I don’t think anybody is ranked in the top 50. But what we have done is taken what is dubbed an individual sport and turn it in to a team effort. We love each other. We’re like brothers.”

After UCLA won four of the six individual matches, Bruins Billy Barber and Mark Quinney began the first doubles match--the No. 2 doubles--against Tennessee’s Coenie de Villiers and John Gibson. In the first set, Tennessee came back from a 5-2 deficit to win 7-6 (7-4). The Volunteers finished off the match, 4-6, 6-2.

“We watched that first set before we started playing our doubles match, and when they won it we thought that we do have a chance,” said Tennessee’s Doug Flach, the younger brother of U.S. Davis Cup member Ken Flach.

UCLA finished the season at 27-4.

It was a tough loss for USC, which had advanced to the semifinals after its first victory over Georgia after five NCAA losses. The match was clinched at a hard-fought No. 1 doubles when Stanford’s Jared Palmer and Jonathan Stark beat Byron Black and Paul Brandt, 7-5, 7-5.

Palmer and Stark are the No. 2 doubles team in the country. It was the first time Black and Brandt had played together. Black’s usual partner is Kent Seton, who is out with the chicken pox. They are ranked No. 3 in the country.

“The kids surprised me, but they have surprised me all week here,” USC Coach Dick Leach said. “I told them they should walk tall. They did themselves very proud. This team got better this year, and they will get better next year, with Byron as our senior.”

For Stark, the doubles victory was his revenge. Hours earlier, Black had beaten him, 7-6 (8-6), 6-7 (7-4), 7-5, in the No. 1 singles match. Fourth-ranked Black is the highest-rated Trojan, and Stark was asked if he had ever faced serves as hard as Black’s.

“Everyday in practice,” Stark answered. “Solly (Glenn Solomon) and O.B. (Alex O’Brien) have the hardest serves I have ever faced.”

That is the depth of Stanford (24-3) going into today’s match against Tennessee. And this is the experience of Cardinal Coach Dick Gould--he has won 10 NCAA championships in 23 years, including the last two years.

Yet Gould says he isn’t taking anything for granted. Before Tennessee was determined as Stanford’s finals opponent, Gould said: “All I know is we’ll be here at 2 p.m. whether we play Tennessee, who is 99-0, or UCLA, which I have the highest respect for.”

When someone corrected him and told him Tennessee was only 34-0, he shook his head and replied, “Same thing.”