Virginia men’s tennis will play at Kentucky after defeating Duke in the round of 16

In dominant fashion on Saturday, the Virginia Cavaliers men’s tennis team won Duke Blue Devils 4-0 to advance past the round of 16 in the NCAA Tournament. With the win, UVA advances to play in the quarterfinals Kentucky Wildcats which the Wahoos defeated 4-0 in the 2022 national championship.

On Saturday, Virginia clinched the doubles point in short order as Iaki Montes and William Woodall won 6-3 before Ryan Goetz and Alexander Kiefer won 6-4 to make third doubles (where Chris Rodesch and Jeffrey von der Schulenberg led 5-4) irrelevant.

Rodesch won her singles match 7-2 in the first set tiebreak before winning the second set 6-4 to put the Wahoos up 2-0. Von der Schulenberg followed up his victory soon after, also winning the first set in the semifinals (7-5) and then taking the second set 7-5 against Dukes Andrew Zhang.

From there, 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 catch match. Dahlberg followed the lead of von der Schulenberg and Rodeschs with a first-set tiebreak win (7-4) before dominating the second set 6-0 to send Virginia into the quarterfinals.

The win against Duke, which follows UVA’s win against the Blue Devils in this year’s ACC Tournament, is the program’s 49th straight win against ACC competition and 19th straight overall. Five seed Virginia will face fourth seed Kentucky in Orlando this coming Thursday. The winner will face the winner of the game between ninth-ranked Texas and ninth-ranked South Carolina.