April 22, 2007

Houston, Texas - The University of Tulsa (19-6) successfully defended its Conference USA Championship with a 4-0 win over championship host Rice on Sunday afternoon in Houston, Texas.

With is second-straight conference championship, Tulsa will also reach its second-straight NCAA tournament, and it's ninth overall.

In Tulsa's six C-USA championship matches, the Golden Hurricane has out scored their opponents, 25-1.

Tulsa, ranked No. 21 in the nation, battled to a 1-0 lead on No. 30 Rice after taking a hotly contested doubles point. In the doubles, Tulsa's duo of Andy Connely and Lucques Maasdorp took an 8-5 decision from Jason Mok and Christoph Muller at the two position, but the Owls evened things up with Ben Harknett and Dennnis Polyakov downing Arnau Brugues and Federico Soriano, 9-7, at the three position.

The No. 39 ranked pair of Diego Camacho and Ross Cunningham sealed the point for the Hurricane with a 9-8 (5) win over No. 53 ranked Ralph Knupfer and Tobias Scheil. Doubles lasted a total of one hour and 40 minutes.

TU quickly opened a 3-0 lead when No. 5 ranked Brugues took a 6-1, 6-4 decision from No. 36 Harknett on court one, followed by Camacho netting a 6-0, 6-4 win over Hoony Shin in the six hole.

The match tightened, with two matches heading into third sets before Ricardo Soriano held on to a 6-3, 7-5 win over No. 120 Knupfer on court two.

Tulsa will find out its NCAA destination and opponent when the team bracket is released on May 1 between 1:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. on ESPNews.