ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla. – No. 3 Hawai'i Pacific University held on during a grueling three hour, 18 minute match to defeat No. 12 Southwest Baptist (Mo.) 4-2 in the quarterfinals of the 2019 NCAA Division II Men's Tennis Championships on Wednesday afternoon at Sanlando Park.
 
The Sharks (18-4), the number three seed in the tournament, advance to Thursday's semifinals against No. 1 Columbus State (Ga.) (27-2), the number two seed. Columbus State downed Midwestern State 4-1 to move on.
 
The Bearcats finished the season 19-3.
 
The match was tight from start to end, with HPU winning the doubles point via a tiebreaker.
 
HPU claimed its first doubles win at No. 2 with Lukas Bauer and Cheng-Chieh Wang beating Raul Caballero and Max Sanoja 6-3. The point came when the Sharks 17th ranked duo of Valentin Masse and Maxime Gayte rallied from a 4-2 and 5-3 deficit at No. 1 to outlast Adham Gaber and Gyorgy Agoston 7-6 with a 7-3 tiebreaker. That win was just in front of Benjamin Loccisano and Ondrej Ctverak at No. 3 against David Szeri and Carlos Corser who were tied at 5-5 but remained unfinished.
 
The Sharks quickly made it a 3-0 lead, with two-set singles wins. Wang dispatched 71st ranked Corser 6-1, 6-1 at No. 5, then 39th ranked Gayte took down Szeri 6-4, 6-2.
 
But the rest of the singles matches would go to three sets.
 
First, 31st ranked Agoston defeated HPU's Loccisano 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 at No. 3. Then Castillo came from behind to bead Bauer at No. 6 6-1, 2-6, 6-3, to pull the Bearcats to within a point at 3-2.
 
The overall matches came down to fights at the top of the order.
 
The battle of top ranked players at the No. 1 position ended up a literal draw as 21st ranked Masse and ninth ranked Gaber was halted in the third set tiebreaker with the score 2-6, 6-4, 6-6, 5-5 in the tiebreak.
 
The reason it was halted was the play of Ctverak at No. 2 against SBU's 58th ranked Caballero. Ctverak won the first set 6-1, but lost 2-6 in the second. But the final set belonged to the Shark who won the match with a final set 6-2 win as the top dogs were battling in the tiebreaker.
 
The victory puts the Sharks into the semifinals for the eighth time in school history, with the last time coming in 2016 when HPU won the national championship.