With the Patriot League Men's Tennis championship tied, 3-3, and with all other Army and AU players finished, the burden of winning the PL title fell to No. 5 seeds Jeffery Schnell, an AU sophomore, and Army's Eddie Kang.
Some fans craned their necks to see three courts over, while others meandered from the bleachers to the other side of the courts to peer through the fence and cheer on Schnell, who fought to break Kang's vicious serve.
But Kang broke first in the third set to go up 5-3. With the chance to serve out the match, Kang went up 40-15 before Schnell won a torturous baseline rally to get within a point of deuce. But Schnell barely reached Kang's next serve and couldn't return it in play.
Kang's 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory clinched Army's first PL title in three tries Sunday, by a 4-3 score, and a trip to the NCAA tournament. Kang's teammates mobbed him in celebration after the victory on AU's courts, while the AU players consoled each other.
With AU's 4-3 regular-season win over Army, the Eagles won the PL regular season title and the right to host the tournament for the fourth straight season. But Army, the preseason favorites in the PL, showed championship opportunism once in the tournament.
Schnell's loss was one of several opportunities that Army seized and AU didn't. In the No. 1 slot, senior Juan Jaysingh had a commanding third-set lead on Army's John Houghton, who would be named tournament MVP. With junior Juancarlo Vazquez charging from a set down to win at the No. 2 spot, 2-6, 7-6, 6-3, Jaysingh had the first chance to clinch the title. But then, the senior made an immature mistake.
"I hate to say this, but I started thinking too much," Jaysingh said. "I worried about Juancarlo's match and about Jeff's match. I lost focus. All of the sudden I dug myself in a hole. At this level, once you do that, it's hard to get back."
There was no way Houghton would let him. After losing the first set, Houghton closed strong in both the second and third sets by overpowering Jaysingh. First, he cruised to a tiebreak win in the second set, and then, trailing 5-2 in the third, he won the set's last five games, breaking Jaysingh twice, to take the match, 3-6, 7-6, 7-5.
"I think he just gets a lot of balls back [over the net]," said Army head coach Jim Poling of Houghton. "He wears you down. He came in for a few points because Juan likes the baseline. But he was just a tiger."
Unlike the past two years, when the Eagles easily defeated the Black Knights in the final, AU entered the final knowing the result would likely hinge on one point. While the Eagles split their six singles matches, they lost two doubles supersets to Army, which ultimately decided an otherwise even bout.
AU head coach Kyle Bailey had focused his team on doubles play the entire season, knowing it was a weakness. Despite the doubles loss, he left the court satisfied with that aspect of his team's play.
"I thought we did as good as we could in doubles," Bailey said, noting two of the three supersets were even until very late. "I thought if we got the doubles point, we'd be able to roll in singles. Even though we didn't win it, I thought we took momentum from our doubles performance."
Indeed, the momentum looked sharply in AU's favor as singles began, as Jaysingh took his first set, while No. 3 Nicolas Frayssinoux and No. 4 Sebastien Proisy won their matches in straight sets. No. 6 Mark Doumba did lose his match quickly, however, to even things at two.
Then, after Vazquez's comeback, things looked decidedly in AU's favor, with Jaysingh up a break in the third. That was just seconds before Houghton broke back, when the momentum turned for good.
Though the ride ended in Army's favor, both sides knew they'd been part of something special.
"I think that was a great match," said Bailey, who played four years for the Eagles before serving as assistant last year and the head coach starting this season. "That's probably the best college match I've seen."
It was just the latest chapter in the PL's best rivalry, one that may end after next season when the AU Athletics Department says it will terminate the Men's and Women's Tennis programs, as well as Men's Golf. Though Poling didn't say it, knowing the time to beat the Eagles could be running out may have motivated the Black Knights.
"We're certainly going to be disappointed if American leaves," he said.
Jaysingh, for whom the transition from player to alumnus may be excruciating, is now going to do his best not to let that happen, he said.
"The next stage is seeing how we can save the program," said Jaysingh, who as a red-shirt senior has become the face of the program on campus.
"It's always been in the back of my mind," he added, "but now it can be my number one goal. [This program] has made me a better person and a better man. I just want for my younger teammates to have the same experience that I did"
