Demon Deacons blank UNC for second league title in three years
Championship Page | Box Score
CARY, N.C. (theACC.com) – When it comes to the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship, the Wake Forest men are finding the Cary Tennis Park quite to their liking.
The top-seeded Demon Deacons blanked second-seeded North Carolina, 4-0, before a tournament record crowd Sunday, wrapping up a high-level ACC Men’s Tennis Championship performance in which they won their three matches by a combined score of 12-1.
The ACC men’s title is the second for Wake Forest, both of which have come at Cary over the past three seasons. Head coach Tony Bresky’s team defeated Virginia in the 2016 title match and lost last year’s rematch with the Cavaliers in Rome, Georgia, before winning back the trophy against the Tar Heels on Sunday.
The Demon Deacons have also appeared in five of the last six ACC Men’s Tennis Championship finals, four of which have come at Cary Tennis Park.
“We remembered that awesome feeling we first had two years ago – right here in Cary on these same courts – and it’s just unbelievable to feel it again,” said Wake Forest senior Skander Mansouri, named tournament MVP after his 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 win over Simon Soendergaard on court No. 3 delivered the clinching point. “I enjoyed it so much, especially with it being my last ACC match.”
Wake Forest (25-2) lived up to its billing as the nation’s No. 1 ranked team and posted its 10th consecutive win. Sunday’s loss ended a nine-game winning streak for the nationally sixth-ranked Tar Heels (22-5), who lost for the first time since dropping a 4-3 decision to the Demon Deacons in the regular-season match between the teams on March 28.
Both teams now await what should be favorable seeding and pairings when the NCAA men’s tournament field is unveiled Tuesday evening.
“I only have five, six matches left (in the NCAAs),” Mansouri said. “I am just going to go out and take it match-by-match and see what happens. I want to make it last, because I love college tennis.”
As it did in Saturday’s semifinal win over Notre Dame, Wake Forest took the doubles point in sharp and efficient fashion. Ian Dempster and Christian Seraphim teamed up for 6-3 win over Soendergaard and Mac Kiger at No. 3, followed by Petros Chrysochos and Bar Botzer’s 6-4 win over Benjamin Sigouin and Bo Boyden at No. 2.
“I think we played a really good doubles point, which kind of set the momentum for the singles,” Bresky said. “The singles matches were close across the board. Carolina has a great team, and we knew it would be a battle. We were fortunate to come out on top.”
Three of the six singles matches went to the third set, but straight sets wins by Chrysochos at No. 2 and Rrezart Cungu at No. 6 set the stage for Mansouri’s clinching win on court No. 3. Chrysochos defeated Sigouin 7-5, 6-1, while Cungu was a 7-5, 6-3 winner over Kiger.
Mansouri, a native of Tunis, Tunisia, also delivered the match-clinching point in the Demon Deacons’ 4-3 title win over Virginia here two years ago.
“He’s obviously a great kid,” Bresky said. “He’s a great student, an outstanding leader, truly popular at the university, a great teammate … you just can’t say enough about him. He puts in the work, he puts in the time and effort. When you do those things, you tend to get the things you deserve. And he truly deserves this moment.”
The 2018 ACC Tennis Championships set a total attendance record for the third consecutive year, and did so by a large margin. This year’s event attracted 3,831 spectators, eclipsing by almost 2,000 last year’s previous record total of 1,853 at the Rome Tennis Center at Berry College.