\n Story Links
\n
<\/p>\n
SURPRISE, Ariz. – In the semifinal round of the NCAA Division II National Tournament, No. 4 (ITA Top-50)\u00a0Flagler College upset No. 1 University of West Florida, 4-2, this afternoon at the\u00a0Surprise Tennis and Raquet Club.<\/p>\n
This is the second time in three years Flagler has advanced to the NCAA Championship and third time since being in the Division\u00a0II era they have defeated the No. 1 ranked team in the nation. Tomorrow the Saints will take on No. 2 and top seeded Barry University at 12 PM for Flagler’s first NCAA Championship.<\/p>\n
Doubles was a shootout across the first two courts, with the Saints emerging victorious on court three. Aniss Raifq and Oliver Hradilek defeated\u00a0Vicente Couto and Rafael Sabio 6-2 to give the Saints their only doubles win. Despite the loss, court one’s No. 30 Simon Malis and Ilian Borlee played the No. 1 doubles team in the nation,\u00a0Diego Duran and Sebastian Rondon to a tight 7-6(7-4) match. Aly El Rafie and Filip Kana’s loss to\u00a0Mark Neyelov and\u00a0Gonalo Quintela\u00a0came down to a 7-5 match.<\/p>\n
Singles saw two career upsets to seal the match. No. 14 Borlee earned his first win of the tournament after his previous two went unfinished. In his 6-3 and 6-0 match, Borlee defeated\u00a0Couto. On court one, No. 17 Malis set a career and program milestone as the first Saint to defeat the No. 1 individually ranked singles player in Division II. Now boasting a 3-1 record on court one, Malis upset\u00a0Sebastian Rondon 6-1 and 6-4. Hradilek\u00a0gave Flagler it’s first lead of the day after defeating\u00a0Neyelov 7-5 and 6-0. To send the Saints marching, No. 35 Rafiq earned his highest ranked win of his career as he defeated No. 3\u00a0Duran, 3-6, 6-2 and 6-3. Rafiq is 3-1 against Top-10 opponents and is a five match win streak.
\n
\n
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Story Links
SURPRISE, Ariz. – In the semifinal round of the NCAA Division II National Tournament,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-282558","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\/282558","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=282558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}