Butts of CMS back in NCAA singles championship match

KALAMAZOO, Mich. – With a return trip to the men's singles national championship match on the line, senior captain Skyler Butts (Santa Ana, CA) of the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men's tennis team faced a familiar foe. An opponent he had lost to both times to in his career. Butts changed all of that however in the semifinals of the NCAA Division III Tennis Championships as he toppled Abhishek Alla of Carnegie Mellon University 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 on May 27 at Stowe Stadium.

For the national championship, fourth-seeded Butts faces host Kalamazoo's Branden Metzler, the No. 7 seed, at 10 a.m. EDT.

Prior to Friday, Alla defeated Butts in the finals of the Division III ITA Small College Nationals during Butts' sophomore season, and as recent as March 7 in Claremont.

In the third match-up between the two, Butts had to come back on several occasions to earn the win. In the first set, Butts trailed 3-1 and then rallied back to win four games in a row to take a 5-3 lead. Alla took a 1-0 advantage in the second set and led 4-3. Butts evened the second set at 4-4 but Alla went on to win and force a third set. Butts also trailed in the third set (0-1, 1-2), but he came back once again by winning four-straight games. Alla took one more game before Butts sealed the match win.

Butts did not have much time to relish his win in singles. Immediately after his win over Alla, he teamed up with doubles teammate, junior Daniel Morkovine (San Carlos, CA), for a quarterfinal match against Kenyon College's Sam Geier and Tristan Kaye. Morkovine and Butts came in as the third seed but were upset by the unseeded Kenyon team 7-6 (5), 6-1.

This is the second-straight season Butts is playing for the singles national championship, having lost in 2015 to teammate Warren Wood 6-1, 6-4.

Complete results and tournament brackets for the singles and doubles competitions are updated daily on the NCAA Championships tournament webpage as soon as the information becomes available.