Freshman Wolf delivers NCAA win
If he were a typical kid his age, JJ Wolf would be thinking about tassels and gowns now, not trying to keep the Ohio State men’s tennis team alive in the NCAA Tournament.
Instead, Wolf enrolled early at Ohio State and settled in as the Buckeyes’ No. 2 singles player this spring, earning Big Ten freshman of the year honors. On Thursday, the Cincinnati native found himself facing Oklahoma senior Andrew Harris in the decisive match with a spot in the NCAA quarterfinals on the line.
Wolf prevailed, winning the final six points of a third-set tiebreak to win 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (2) to give Ohio State a 4-3 victory in Athens, Georgia. Ohio State will play TCU on Saturday.
“It’s unbelievable,” Buckeyes coach Ty Tucker said. “That’s why we wanted him to start in January. He has helped this team the whole season and capped it off by beating one of the better college tennis players.”
Harris, an Australian, is 5 years older than Wolf, though he missed most of the spring because of an injury.
“For JJ to be able to keep his nerves together on the biggest stage and the last match on as a high school senior is incredible,” Tucker said.
The third-seeded Buckeyes (32-3) trailed almost the whole way against 14th-seeded Oklahoma (17-11).
Ohio State lost the doubles point when Wolf and Hunter Tubert lost the decisive match in a tiebreak after failing to convert three match points.
“It’s hard to regroup in five minutes,” Tucker said. “For an hour, we looked a little-deer-in-theheadlights, but the guys stuck around and stuck around and kept fighting.”
Kyle Seelig at No. 6 singles and Herkko Pollanen at No. 5 won in straight sets for the Buckeyes, but they were still in a hole because Mikael Torpegaard, Hugo Di Feo and Martin Joyce all lost the first set of their matches.
Di Feo and Joyce went on to lose in straight sets, but Torpegaard rallied from a break down to win the second set in a tiebreak and then prevailed in the third for a 2-6, 7-6, 6-3 victory at No. 1 singles.
That left it up to Wolf. He had a match point at 40-40 up 5-4, but his backhand service return was long. But in the tiebreak, Wolf dominated after falling behind 2-1.
Today, the OSU women play their third-round match against South Carolina, which defeated the Buckeyes in the NCAAs in 2014.
“We were a young team at that time,” Buckeyes coach Melissa Schaub said. “We’re a little more of a veteran team now.”
The OSU women, like the men, are the third seed. Also like the men, they expect a tough match against an opponent they believe is better than their 14th seed.