Blue Raiders fall to No. 23 BYU

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - The Blue Raiders fell 4-1 to No. 23 Brigham Young to open play at the HEB Invitational on Friday morning.

Middle Tennessee opened the match by winning the doubles point in dramatic fashion for a 1-0 lead. BYU won No. 3 doubles 8-5 after Georgy Batrakov and Daniel Hwang defeated sophomore Richard Cowden and freshman Shaun Waters.

Sophomore Matthew Langley and senior Victor Melo evened the scored with their 9-8 (5) win over Evan Urbina and Spencer Smith. Juniors John Peers and Kyle Wishing pulled out a tiebreaker of their own 9-8 (4) over Thomas Shubert and Cassidy Mears to hand Middle Tennessee the point.

In singles action, Cowden, Waters and seniors Alex McCann all lost in straight sets as BYU quickly took the lead. Langley lost his first set 6-2 to Hwang but rebounded to win the second 6-2. Hwang handed BYU the match after defeating Langley 6-2 in the third set.

No. 39 Peers and Melo were both leading the third sets of their respective singles matches when BYU won the match and those matches are recorded as unfinished on the official record.

Middle Tennessee will face tournament host Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at 4 p.m. on Friday, March 5 at 4 p.m.

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