Virginia men’s tennis set to play Kentucky after beating Duke in the Round of 16

In dominant fashion on Saturday, the Virginia Cavaliers men’s tennis team beat the Duke Blue Devils 4-0 to advance beyond the NCAA Tournament’s Round of 16. With the win, UVA heads to the quarterfinals to play the Kentucky Wildcats — who the Wahoos beat 4-0 in the 2022 National Championship.

On Saturday, Virginia clinched the doubles point in short order with the pairing of Iñaki Montes and William Woodall winning 6-3 before Ryan Goetz and Alexander Kiefer won 6-4 to make the third doubles match (which Chris Rodesch and Jeffrey von der Schulenberg were leading 5-4) irrelevant.

Rodesch won his singles match with a 7-2 first set tiebreak before winning taking the second set 6-4 to put the Wahoos up 2-0. Von der Schulenberg followed with his win shortly thereafter, also winning the first set in a tiebreaker (7-5) and then taking the second set 7-5 versus Duke’s Andrew Zhang.

From that point onwards, the Cavaliers were just one point away from advancing. It became a race between Mans Dahlberg, Kiefer, Goetz, and Montes to see who would win the clinching match. Dahlberg followed von der Schulenberg and Rodesch’s example with a first set tiebreak win (7-4) before dominating his second set 6-0 to send Virginia on to the quarterfinals.

The win against Duke — which follows UVA’s victory against the Blue Devils in this year’s ACC Tournament — is the program’s 49th consecutive victory against ACC competition and 19th straight win overall. Five seed Virginia will play four seed Kentucky in Orlando this coming Thursday. The winner will play the victor of the match between one seed Texas and nine seed South Carolina.