{"id":237388,"date":"2026-04-18T23:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T23:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/237388\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T23:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T23:24:10","slug":"no-1-rice-downs-south-florida-returns-to-championship-match","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/237388\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 1 Rice Downs South Florida, Returns to Championship Match"},"content":{"rendered":"

TULSA, Okla. \u2013 No. 1 seed Rice defeated No. 4 seed South Florida 4-1 to advance to its second straight American Conference Championship match.
\n\u00a0
\nRice secured its 20th doubles point of the season to take an early lead. Yair Sarouk<\/a> and Kabeer Kapasi<\/a> opened doubles with a 6-1 win over Ettore Danesi and Guglielmo Verdese. South Florida evened the field when Tommy Czaplinski<\/a> and Rafael Botran<\/a> fell 6-2 to Hugo Car and Timeo Gaillard. Petro Kuzmenok<\/a> and Santiago Navarro<\/a> clinched the doubles point with a 7-6 win over Francisco Llanes and James Newton.
\n\u00a0
\nSouth Florida tied the match at 1-1 when Verdese defeated Gabriel Porras<\/a> 6-3, 6-3 on court five. Rice responded by taking control the rest of the way. Navarro earned a 6-4, 6-4 win over Elijah Cham, and Botran secured a three-set victory (6-3, 5-7, 6-3) over Stepan Mruzek.
\nFor the second time this championship, Noey Do<\/a> clinched the match, defeating Llanes 2-6, 6-4, 7-5.
\n\u00a0
\nWhen play was halted, Kuzmenok led 4-3 in the third set after splitting the first two sets 7-6, 5-7. Kapasi also led in the third, 2-1, after set scores of 5-7, 7-5.
\n\u00a0
\nLast season, the Owls defeated South Florida 4-3 to advance to the championship, where they went on to win their first American Conference title.
\n\u00a0
\nRice will face No. 6 seed Tulsa in the championship at noon Sunday. The match will be streamed on ESPN+.
\n\u00a0
\nRESULTS

\nDOUBLES
\nP. Kuzmenok\/S. Navarro (RICE) def. F. Llanes\/J. Newton (USF) 7-6
\nY. Sarouk\/K. Kapasi (RICE) def. E. Danesi\/G. Verdese (USF) 6-1
\nH. Car\/Y. Gaillard (USF) def. T. Czaplinski\/R. Botran (RICE) 6-2
\nOrder of Finish: 2, 3, 1<\/p>\n

SINGLES

\nP. Kuzmenok (RICE) vs H. Car (USF) 7-6, 5-7, 4-3 uf

\nS. Navarro (RICE) def. E. Cham (USF) 6-4, 6-4

\nR. Botran (RICE) def. S. Mruzek (USF) 6-3, 5-7, 6-3

\nK. Kapasi (RICE) vs A. Cuellar (USF) 5-7, 7-5, 2-1 uf

\nG. Verdese (USF) def. G. Porras (RICE) 6-3, 6-3

\nN. Do (RICE) def. F. Llanes (USF) 2-6, 6-4, 7-5

\nOrder of Finish: 5, 2, 3, 6

\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TULSA, Okla. \u2013 No. 1 seed Rice defeated No. 4 seed South Florida 4-1 to advance to its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-237388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}