UNC men’s tennis pounded by Ohio State

The North Carolina men’s tennis team avoided a second consecutive shutout against Ohio State on Tuesday.

Barely.

After No. 22 Auburn steamrolled No. 24 UNC 7-0 on Saturday, the No. 4 Buckeyes blew out the Tar Heels 6-1.

But North Carolina coach Sam Paul said the difference between the two matches was more than a single point.

“That team’s No. 4 in the country and we battled them for about three and a half hours,” Paul said. “The score might not reflect it, but we played better than we did against Auburn, so we made a step in the right direction.”

The Buckeyes took the doubles point behind wins from two top-10 pairings. No. 10 Matt Allare and Peter Kobelt beat UNC’s No. 20 Jose Hernandez and Brennan Boyajian 8-5 on Court One, then No. 6 Chase Buchanan and Blaz Rola beat Stefan Hardy and Zach Hunter 8-4 on the second court.

“We face all kinds of situations throughout the season and this is no different from any other loss,” Hardy said. “We’re just going to move forward from here.”

North Carolina won the third doubles match, but Ohio State had already clinched the point.

Things only got worse for the Tar Heels in singles.

No. 107 Hardy put the UNC on the board with a 6-1, 6-2 win against No. 103 Ille Van Engelen, but that win was all the Tar Heels got.

Hardy’s win was his first against a ranked team this spring after losses against Georgia Tech, Georgia and Auburn. It came on the third court, where he played almost all of last season. Until the Auburn match, he had been playing at No. 2.

No. 101 Boyajian, who replaced Hardy, has lost both his matches at the second flight. He struggled in a straight-sets loss to Ohio State’s No. 5 Rola.

The absence of Florida transfer Joey Burkhardt, who has sat out every team match this season for failing to meet team obligations, has hurt North Carolina’s depth.

Without Burkhardt, who finished the preseason ranked No. 58 and is still ranked No. 71, some of the other Tar Heels have been forced to play on higher courts.

No. 30 Hernandez, the highest-ranked Tar Heel, lost to No. 21 Buchanan at the top flight. Ohio State had already won the match by the time the two finished a back-and-forth first set that lasted more than an hour and a half.

Buchanan won the set 7-5 then rolled over Hernandez 6-0 in the second.

“He played a good service game, got better with his returns,” Hernandez said. “The game was faster. He caught me off guard.”

The length of the match seemed to affect Hernandez, especially toward the end of the first set. He hit more serves into the net and started serving to the middle of the service box even on first serves.

He said conditioning wasn’t an issue, but he needed to work on his footwork to be in a better position to win longer points.

Hernandez also said the Tar Heels would have no problem putting the loss behind them.

“We need to believe more in ourselves,” Hernandez said. “We have the talent to beat anyone in the country. It’s just a matter of playing at 100 percent all at the same time.”

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