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JUNE 2022 13 With fans packing the stands, the team was spurred on to three 4-0 sweeps that punched their ticket to Champaign, Ill., and the Elite Eight, where they would face No. 2 seed Florida. Virginia would be taking on the last team it had lost to. An equally red-hot Gator squad had won 21 straight matches, starting with its 4-2 victory against UVA. The Gators started the match with a 6-1 win at No. 3 doubles. The skies above the courts were darkening, and so were the hopes for Virginia's fifth title. The players on doubles courts one and two paid no at- tention to either omen. Second-year Chris Rodesch and graduate student Bar Botzer took down the Gators' fifth-ranked doubles team of Sam Riffice and Ben Shelton, 6-4, to even it up. Court two went to a tiebreaker, with second-year Iñaki Montes and fourth- year Ryan Goetz gutting out a 7-3 win to take the point and give UVA the 1-0 lead. The literal darkening skies above, how- ever, were not conquered. Eighty minutes into the match, a rainstorm rolled through and created a two-hour and 24-minute rain delay. "After the rain delay, I told them that it was a new match," Pedroso said. "That it's like we started the doubles point all over again. It was all about energy and compo- sure. I really felt like we would play our best tennis if we brought the energy and had good composure, and you know, that's what happened." Montes, who had started in a 2-0 hole against Riffice, came out with fresh energy, taking his first set 7-5, a momentum swing that fired up the entire team. Even after Florida tied the match with a straight-set victory on court four, the Cavaliers contin- ued battling and winning. Montes was the first to the finish line, stunning Riffice 6-4 in the second set to give UVA a 2-1 lead. Gianni Ross, a fifth-year who was Pedroso's first recruit at UVA, went toe-to-toe with Mattias Siimar on court five, picking up a late break in both of his sets to win 7-5, 7-5 and put the Cavaliers on the brink. Though the scoreboard said 3-1, the match was much tighter than that. Rodesch had battled Shelton to a tiebreaker in the first set, with Shelton eventually gaining a 12-10 advantage. On court three, UVA sec- ond-year Jeffrey von der Schulenburg had lost his first set 6-2 against Duarte Vale and was in a tiebreaker to stay alive. He won the breaker 7-5 to force a third set. Botzer, the only team member with championship ex- perience having been part of Wake Forest's 2018 title team, had dropped his second set on court six against Josh Goodger and was on-serve deep in the third set. It was von der Schulenburg who found a way to win, willing himself to a 6-3 win in the third set to clinch the victory just as Rodesch won his second set against Shel- ton to keep the final score at 4-1. Down went the reigning champions, and the Hoos moved on to the semifinals. Virginia wasn't the only team playing havoc with the bracket that night. In their quarterfi- nal match, Tennessee up-ended No. 3 Baylor and Kentucky took out top-seeded TCU. Ohio State, the last of the top four seeds, would fall in the semis against Kentucky. For the first time since February, it began to look like this could be the Cavaliers' year. First, they had to get through a tough Ten- nessee squad. The sixth-seeded Volunteers also had defeated two ACC schools, Florida State and Duke, ahead of taking out the Bears in the quarterfinals. Like Florida, they had a stacked top of their lineup with two top-10 players. With another round of bad weather, the match was played on the indoor courts where UVA sailed through the doubles point with wins on courts two and three. They only needed three wins in singles to move on to the semifinals. They would get four. The Cavaliers won all six first sets, but the scores were close other than Ross's 6-1 victory on court five. Rodesch, von der Schulenburg and Botzer all won 7-5 while Montes and Goetz both went to tiebreakers in their first sets. Ross went down a break early in his sec- ond set against Angel Diaz but rallied to win it 6-4 and put UVA ahead 2-0. Von der Schulen- burg served up 6-5 but was broken by Emile Hudd to force a tiebreaker to decide the sec- ond set on court three. Von der Schulenburg won the breaker 7-2 to put UVA on the brink. Three of the four remaining courts had the Cavaliers in a position to clinch. Mon- tes was serving up 5-3, Goetz was serving up 5-2, and Botzer was returning up 5-2. For the final points, Martim Prata, Botzer's opponent, served ahead of Montes, with Botzer winning seconds ahead of Montes, finishing off No. 10 Johannus Monday on court two, giving UVA the 5-0 final and its trip to the championship match. For the first time in Champaign, Virginia was the higher seed when they faced No. 8 Kentucky, a team they had defeated 4-2 earlier in the season in Lexington. Also, for the first time in Champaign, Virginia was in the driver's seat the whole time. UVA took the doubles point with 6-3 and 6-1 scores on courts two and three. They had dominant first-set wins on three singles courts and started ticking off the second sets. Botzer finished first with a 6-1, 6-1 win on court six. Like the semifinals, the Cavaliers had three courts poised to pick up the final two points. Goetz and Montes were both serving for the win. Goetz was broken by Francois Musitelli, sending his match into a tiebreaker to decide the set. Montes was up 5-0 and was also broken, but closed out a 6-2, 6-2 win against No. 21 Gabriel Diallo on his next service to put UVA ahead 3-0. On three, Goetz battled in his tiebreaker while Ross began serving up 5-4 in the second set against Joshua Lapadat on five. Goetz won a point to go up 6-5 in his tiebreaker as a shot from Lapadat landed outside the baseline to give Ross the victory and the clinch for the Cavaliers. Pedroso, who was on the opposite end watching Goetz's tiebreaker, didn't realize his team had won. "I just all of a sudden got a hug from Bar Botzer. And he looked at me and said, 'Can you believe it?' And I said 'No.'" As hard as it is to believe, Virginia won 23 straight matches to go from a 5-5 team to a national champion that defeated their op- ponents by a combined score of 25-1 in its six NCAA Tournament matches.