Ohio State tennis duo win NCAA Doubles national championship
ORLANDO, Florida (WCMH) — Ohio State’s Andrew Lutschaunig and James Trotter are bringing a national championship trophy back to Columbus.
The Buckeye duo beat the No. 3 ranked team of Cleeve Harper and Eliot Spizzirri of Texas 6-4, 6-4 to win the NCAA Doubles National Championship on Saturday.
This is the second NCAA doubles title in program history as Lutschaunig and Trotter join Chase Buchanan and Blaz Rola who won the title in 2012.
Overall, Lutschaunig and Trotter finished with a record of 18-8 this season. Trotter was 29-1 in singles and 22-8 in doubles while Lutschaunig finished with a team-high tying 31 doubles wins. He entered the year with a total of 20 career doubles victories.
The two sets were nearly a mirror of one another. With the exception of one early game, neither team had much trouble holding serve for most of the first set. Trotter and Lutschaunig got the first break on a deuce point at 4-4 and then held at love to take the opening set 6-4.
The teams traded breaks in the first two games of the second set but then both sides settled in and held through 4-4. That’s when the Buckeyes broke again, this time at love, to take a 5-4 lead. Texas looked to get right back on serve, winning the first three points to go up 0-40. But the Buckeyes battled back to deuce and Trotter finished the match with an ace up the middle from Trotter.
This was the third meeting this season between the two teams and Lutschaunig and Trotter came out on top in all three meetings. They won 6-3 on Feb. 5 inside the Ty Tucker Tennis Center and then won 6-4 at the ITA Indoor Team National Championships on Feb. 18. This was also the second consecutive season in which it was an Ohio State vs. Texas final. Matej Vocel and Robert Cash fell in last year’s final to Harper and Richard Ciamara.
Lutschaunig caps an amazing doubles season. He won the ITA Fall National Doubles Championship with JJ Tracy back in November in San Diego and then earned his first All-America honor en route to winning the NCAA Doubles Championship. Trotter was also a singles All-American this season, marking the first two All-America honors of his career.