NCAA Tennis: UCLA Bruins beat USC Trojans to notch first win over crosstown rivals in five years

UCLA men's tennis team overcame USC 4-1 at David X. Marks Tennis Stadium in Los Angeles in the NCAA Division I Men's Tennis Championships play-ins on Friday (March 29). More importantly, the Bruins broke an eight-match losing streak against the Trojans.

The Trojans were the first team to get on the scoreboard, with the team of Peter Makk and Lodewijk Weststrate winning 6-2 over Timothy Li and Giacomo Revelli. UCLA Bruins, who have 16 NCAA Men's Tennis Championships to their name, restored parity in the second doubles match of the tie, as Spencer Johnson and Emon Van Loben Sels beat Samuel Rubell and Niroop Vallabhaneni 6-3.

The final doubles rubber also went to the Bruins as Govind Nanda and Alexander Hoogmartens toughed out a 7-5 win against USC's Volodymyr Iakubenko and Karl Lee to take a 2-1 lead. The play-in encounter was one-way traffic for UCLA once the singles matches began.

Jorge Plans Gonzalez got the 16-time Division I titlists to a 3-1 lead with his 6-1, 7-5 win over the Trojans' Niroop Vallabhaneni. The tie was effectively ended 4-1 by Alexander Hoogmartens, who came from a set down to beat his USC opponent Karl Lee 1-6, 7-5, 6-4.

Meanwhile, Govind Nanda, Giacomo Revelli and Spencer Johnson also played singles matches, but their matches weren't counted in the match score. The Bruins' last win over their arch-rivals came during the 2018-19 season, when they beat the Trojans 4-3 in Winston-Salem.

Overall, the UCLA men's tennis team leads USC 36-27 in their head-to-head meetings in the NCAA Division I Men's Tennis Championships. Out of those 36 wins, 17 have come on home turf.

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UCLA Bruins have won 16 NCAA Division I Championships

The tennis campus at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

UCLA Bruins have triumphed at the NCAA Division I Championships, the annual men's intercollegiate championship sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, a whopping 16 times.

For academic purposes, only their volleyball team has won more titles (20) out of all other college sports teams at the Los Angeles-based university. UCLA won their first intercollegiate tennis title in 1950, overcoming none other than their crosstown rivals USC in the championship match.

The first intercollegiate tennis championship was organized in 1883, which saw the Harvard Crimson take both the singles and doubles titles. However, this title came well before the NCAA's inception; it was only in 1946 that the annual tournament was recognized by the athletics organization.