Tobias Scheil made his spring dual match singles debut and picked up a 6-2, 6-1 win at the No. 6 position.

March 22, 2008

HOUSTON - The No. 17 Rice men's tennis team rolled to a 4-0 sweep against No. 72 Middle Tennessee State Saturday afternoon on day two of the 46th Annual Rice Invitational at Jake Hess Stadium.

The Owls (11-5) fell behind in doubles play as MTSU's No. 2 pair of Richard Cowden and John Peers knocked off Tobias Scheil and Chong Wang, 8-5.

Christoph Müller and Filip Zivojinovic evened the doubles tally picking up with a hard-fought 8-6 win against Morgan Richard and Marc Rocafort in the top spot.

At the No. 3 position, Rice's Bruno Rosa and Dennis Polyakov headed to a tiebreaker versus Joao Paoliello and Chris Nowak to decide the early edge. Rosa and Polyakov emerged with a 7-4 triumph in the breaker to give the Owls a 1-0 lead.

"The doubles point always is critical and it went to down to the wire today," head coach Ron Smarr said. "I was proud of how Bruno and Dennis executed in a winner-take-all situation."

Scheil made his dual match singles season debut and notched a convincing 6-2, 6-1 victory over Nowak at the bottom of the lineup to push the Rice advantage to 2-0.

Zivojinovic held off a late Cowden second set rally and notched a 6-3, 6-4 win at No. 4 to make it 3-0.

No. 26 ranked Rosa secured the victory for the second straight match at the top of the lineup as the Brazilian dismantled Richard 7-5, 6-0.