The 20th-ranked Alabama men’s tennis team lost a hard-fought battle to Texas A&M on Sunday by a score of 4-3.

“This is a very good team in Texas A&M,” coach George Husack said. “They’ve done really well in recent years and expected to come in and beat us. I thought we put up a great effort today. We still need to get better on a couple courts, but overall it came down to the end and we had opportunities. Their guy played big and that’s the way college tennis goes.”

Texas A&M got off to a quick start in the doubles point by winning 6-1 on court No. 2. On courts No. 1 and No. 3, Alabama and Texas A&M were locked into two back-and-forth matches. Senior Mazen Osama and sophomore Patrick Kaukovalta were broken in the final game of the match to lose 6-4 and concede the doubles point to Texas A&M.

To begin the singles matches, Alabama and Texas A&M traded matches with junior Jeremy Gschwendtner dominating No. 105 Austin Abbrat 6-0, 6-3.  Next, No. 32 Osama continued his stretch of solid performances with a 7-5, 6-2 victory. With the final three matches going to a third set, Alabama found tied 2-2 and needed to win two of the three matches to secure the victory.

In junior Alexey Nesterov’s match, he was unable to overcome consecutive service breaks and lost 1-6, 6-3, 0-6. By the end of Nesterov’s match, juniors Edson Ortiz and Riccardo Roberto were both tied at 1-1 in their respective third sets. Roberto broke serve late in the match and won a deuce point in the final game to finalize his victory 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.

Husack said, “I’m really happy for [Riccardo’s] growth and it comes down to his commitment in training, which has allowed him the opportunity to play.”

On court No. 2, Ortiz won three consecutive games in the third set to go up 4-1, but then lost the next four. He then broke his opponent’s serve and won the following game to go up 6-5, but was unable to break serve again, which forced the match into a tiebreak. Ortiz could not overcome his opponent and lost the tiebreak 7-2.

“I wouldn’t want anyone else out there in Edson Ortiz with the outcome on his shoulders,” Husack said. “This is just one match and we have ten more conference matches to go.”

The Crimson Tide will be on the road next weekend against Kentucky and 27th-ranked Vanderbilt.