Trailing after doubles play, it took the final match of Wednesday's action at McPherson College to determine the winner as the 6th ranked Barton Community College men's tennis team rallied for a 4-3 victory.
Barton will have a day of rest and recovery before hosting the weekend's Barton Classic, beginning Friday at Ellinwood Grade School Tennis Courts with a 10:30 a.m. intrasquad battle before taking on Newman University at 2:30 p.m. Switching location to Great Bend's Veteran's Park on Saturday, the Cougars conclude the Classic at 10:30 a.m. against Iowa Central Community College.
The Cougars fell behind 1-0 in the match dropping two of the doubles matches in the tiebreak. The lone win came at the No. 2 as James Kaoma and Barnabas Kalaba stood victorious 6-2 while the No. 1 duo of Gustavo Campos and Tsholofelo Tsiang dropped a 7-5 tiebreak score and the No. 3 tandem of Eduardo Morais and Samyak Bajracharya lost their breaker 7-4.
In singles play Barton won the match by taking four of the six matches including Tsiang's come from behind 5-7, 7-6(7), and 10-6 victory providing the difference maker in the No. 6 spot.
All six matches were highly competitive as two of Barton's previous three victories also came in the tiebreak, No. 2 Kaoma winning 10-7 after splitting 6-1, 3-6, sets while Morais came out with a 10-8 No. 3 slot victory after splitting sets 7-6 and 3-6. In the No. 4 spot, Kalaba prevailed in consecutive 7-5 set wins.
As Barton won by narrow margins, they also lost by narrow margins. Campos lost in 6-4 consecutive sets in the top spot with a 10-5 tiebreak defeating Bajracharya in the No. 5 singles to spoil a rally in dropping the first set 6-3 but forcing the third with an identical 6-3 win.