OLIVER KIMOKEO | sports editor

In men’s tennis action on Feb. 18, the Cougars celebrated another victory over a quality program. The problem for APU was that it was the wrong Cougar who clawed their way to ascendancy. The Cougars of the NCAA Division I No. 73-ranked BYU defeated the Cougars of APU by a score of 7-2.

BYU brought the heat and then some, and all APU could do was try to keep up. There were still two APU performances which prevented the day from being a total whitewash.

The No. 3 doubles team of sophomore Ronald Chow and freshman Daniel Moore held off a constant BYU attack.

After being down 7-6 in the set, Chow and Moore took eight of the next nine points to position themselves with a 8-7 lead in the set. BYU came back though and took the final game of the set with a 45-30 win. APU’s No. 1 and No. 2 doubles already lost in their sets so Chow and Moore needed to win to give the APU Cougars a competitive chance in the singles round.

In the tiebreaker, APU earned the first point but BYU responded with three points. After six points, BYU led with a 4-2 lead.

“At this point, we said to each other that we got this, we need to step up the intensity and fight everything,” Chow said.

Chow and Moore responded with three points for the APU side and put themselves in the position of control as they went up 5-4. BYU with a 2-1 run to put the score at 6-6. Chow and Moore took the next two points and the APU Cougars took the tiebreaker 8-6.

The singles play wasn’t quite as competitive as BYU took the lower five singles matches in straight sets. No. 1 singles Matthijs Bolsuis battled with BYU’s Jonathan Sanchez for a three-set epic.

“It was just a big battle,” Bolsuis said. “I did not know what the overall score was so I thought it was still really close. I felt like we already lost as a team but I just fought and won and I’m happy with that.”

Bolsuis took the match with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 win but Sanchez shook off four match points before Bolsuis finally clinched the match.

“It was really hard to close it out,” Bolsuis said. “I thought I played it well but he just came up with some shots and had to hang in there. At the end, I served really well, played aggressive and kept the ball at his backhand.”

BYU was a late addition to the schedule as the Utah university needed another opponent for their three-game weekend swing through Southern California.

“Three weeks ago, they got rained out at UCLA so we scheduled them,” head coach Mark Bohren said. “I am decent friends with their head coach.”

Bohren thought APU did not come out with the same force as they would for games against NAIA colleges.

“I still think when we play good Division I schools, we get a little intimidated,” Bohren said. “Expectations aren’t set as high as they are for a normal match and I don’t know why that is.”