LAGRANGE, Ga.  Looking for the league's automatic berth (AQ) into the national tournament, Methodist University's men's tennis team, for the second consecutive year, met up with North Carolina Wesleyan College in the championship match of the USA South Athletic Conference tournament.

And for the second straight spring it will be the Battling Bishops, ranked No. 23 in the latest ITA national Division III poll, who earn that AQ after downing the Monarchs, 5-0, Sunday morning at the McCluskey Tennis Center.

The men's conference championship is part of the USA South's 2019 Spring Festival, an annual event in one location that crowns league champions in men's and women's tennis, men's and women's lacrosse, baseball, softball and men's golf. The city of LaGrange, Georgia, and LaGrange College hosted the 2019 Festival.

THE ESSENTIALS
Event: 2019 USA South men's tennis championship
Final score: N.C. Wesleyan def. Methodist, 5-0
Location: McCluskey Tennis Center; LaGrange, Ga.

HOW IT HAPPENED

• The opening trio of doubles matches is always important in a 'play to decision' match (best of 9 but first to 5 points), not only in scoring but also in momentum. N.C. Wesleyan earned the momentum and a decided match advantage by taking all three doubles matches.
• Methodist's No. 1 tandem of Trent Harner and Coleman Baker battled early but eventually dropped an 8-3 decision to allow the Bishops a second point, after they had already won at 2-doubles.
• The match at No. 3 played more evenly, with Hayden Wilfong and Kayhahn Alikhani squaring off against Ingmar Remmerswaal and Juan Telles. The pair of duos rolled to a narrow 6-5 N.C. Wesleyan advantage, and the Bishops finished off the match with a service hold and break to sweep the last doubles point.
• Needing to capture five of the six singles matches, Methodist's Coleman Baker won his opening set, 7-5, at No. 3 singles to initiate hopes for a rally. But the Bishops took each opening set on the other five courts to stunt the rally.
• The Monarchs stepped to the brink with a straight-set win by N.C. Wesleyan's Nick Revin over Henry Murray at 6-singles, then were pushed over the edge with the Bishops' Adi Iyer taking a straight-set victory at No. 2 over Trent Harner.

FINAL NOTES

• Harner and Baker were named to the all-tournament team.
• Sunday's matches were the final ones in the careers of seniors Wynn Johnson and Jacob Oehser.
• The defeat at the hands of N.C. Wesleyan is the third consecutive spring in which the Battling Bishops have ended Methodist's season, including a conference tournament semifinal win over the Monarchs in 2017.