Cassone Upsets No. 26 De La Torre Monday Night To Advance in NCAA’s

Orlando, Fla.– Coming off an undefeated month of April and coming off a win against Illinois in the team tournament, Murphy Cassone continued his postseason by upsetting Virginia’s No. 26 Inaki Montes De La Torre, 6-3, 7-6 (7-1) in the opening round of the NCAA Singles Men’s Tournament Monday night at the USTA National Campus.

Cassone will continue his postseason run tomorrow in the Round of 32 against the winner of Cannon Kingsley of Ohio State or Colton Smith of Arizona which will take place at approximately 12 p.m. MST on Tuesday, May 23.

“Murphy had a super impressive focus and execution today,” head coach Matt Hill said. “We have a lot of respect for Inaki as a competitor and I thought Murphy did a great job mentally staying point to point with him through the swings of the match. Inaki is definitely one of the smartest players in the country, so it was critical for Murphy to stay intellectual in the match instead of emotional which he did a fantastic job of executing. I’m very proud of the match from Murphy and excited for him to get another opportunity tomorrow against another great player.”

The sophomore started his match quickly, achieving an early break-point to take an early 2-0 lead in the first set, then after Torre tied the set at 2-2, Cassone took the momentum right back notching his second break-point to go up 4-2, then ultimately served for the set to take a one-set lead winning 6-3.

Going into the second set, Cassone faced an early two-game deficit, being down 3-1, but Cassone didn’t falter after that taking the next five of eight games to bring the match to a 6-6 tiebreak. In the tiebreaker, he took the first six points going up 6-0 and having seven chances at match point, which he later succeeded in winning the tiebreak 7-1 to claim the match and set 7-6. It’s the Kansas native’s sixth straight-set win since the start of April and his second NCAA Single’s tournament victory.

Cassone will continue his run in the Singles tournament tomorrow at 12 p.m. MST. Live Scoring can be available here. Continue following @SunDevilMTennis on Twitter and Instagram for all the latest coverage and news.