No. 9 Arizona's roaring comeback bid falls just short in 4-3 loss to No. 8 Columbia in NCAA men's tennis Sweet 16

Maybe, maybe not. But it would have been a monumental moment either way for Clancy Shields’ Arizona men’s tennis program had his Wildcats pulled it off.

Yet, the UA’s historic 2024 season came to an end Saturday, with the ninth-seeded Wildcats falling 4-3 to eight seed Columbia in a down-to-the-wire battle in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 in New York City.

After Columbia (23-3) opened up a 3-0 lead by securing the hotly-contested doubles point — all three doubles matches were decided at either 7-6 or 7-5 outcomes — and with wins over Arizona’s best players on Courts 1 and 2 in singles play, the Wildcats (26-4) went to work at mounting what would have been a most-remarkable comeback.

Columbia’s Michael Zheng had already bested Arizona’s Colton Smith 6-4, 6-1 in the first position, with Wildcat Jay Friend falling to Alex Kotzen 2-6, 6-3, 6-3 in position two. But on the third, fourth and sixth courts, respectively, Arizona’s Gustaf Strom (1-6, 6-3, 6-0 over Columbia’s Nicolas Kotzen), Herman Hoeyeraal (7-6, 6-3 over Max Westphal) and Nick Lagaev (6-4, 6-4 over Henry Ruger) hung in there for singles wins to push the overall match back to a 3-3 tie.

That left Arizona’s Casper Christensen, who hadn’t been defeated in singles play in practically two months, and Columbia’s Hugo Hashimoto competing in the fifth position to decide which program would advance. Hashimoto took the first set; Christensen countered to win the second. In the third set, Christensen and Hashimoto — playing over the home-crowd chants of “Hugo!, Hugo!” on the upper Manhattan rooftop courts of the Lions’ Milstein Family Tennis Center — were tied 2-2. Hashimoto won three straight games, however, and eventually sealed a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 win.

Columbia’s win means the top eight seeds are the eight teams to advance in the 2024 NCAA Tournament. They’ll compete this coming week in Stillwater, Oklahoma, with the championship round a week from Sunday. The Lions will face top seed Ohio State in the quarterfinals. The Wildcats faced OSU in last year’s Sweet 16, pressuring the third-seeded Buckeyes before bowing out 4-2.

While Arizona this season still has some individual competitors that will see action in NCAA singles play this month in Stillwater, the team component of the Wildcats’ season concludes — and it’s hard to argue against it being the best in the UA men’s program’s history.

Arizona won a share of the Pac-12 regular season championship for the third consecutive season while also reaching the Sweet 16 a third straight time. The Wildcats won their first Pac-12 Tournament and also cracked the Top 10 of the national team rankings on multiple occasions.

Shields won his third Pac-12 Coach of the Year award, while six Wildcats were honored by the Pac-12: Smith, Friend and Strom all were first-team all-conference selections; Lagaev and Hoeyeraal were second-team honorees; Christensen earned all-Pac-12 honorable mention status.

Smith and Friend, the conference’s doubles team of the year, will represent the Wildcats on an individual basis later this month, competing in the NCAA men’s singles championship in Stillwater.