Enduring cramping issues, a weather delay and a feisty opponent, Illinois men’s tennis freshman Jared Hiltzik was able to move onto the second round of the NCAA singles tournament.

Hiltzik battled against UCLA’s Adrien Puget and came away with the 5-7, 6-2, 6-4 victory at the Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex.

“The whole match, the crowd was unbelievable,” Hiltzik said. “Today, I was hurting, and they pulled me through.”

The Big Ten Freshman of the Year said that he had an overhand hit in the fifth game of the third set and his left quad “totally locked up.” After the game, he called for a medical timeout to drink fluids and get stretched out by a trainer. At every pause for the rest of the match, Hiltzik would have ice packs on his quads to try and stay loose.

With a 4-2 lead for Hiltzik in the third set when he received medical attention, Puget came back and tied the final frame 4-4 by working the ball to the corners and preying on Hiltzik’s gimpy left quad. Hiltzik would break Puget to get to 5-4 and serve for the win to reach the final 6-4 margin.

“I’ve cramped in the past and lost those matches in three sets,” Hiltzik said. “So today was a monkey off my back.”

The players also had to deal with about a 45-minute weather delay as rain poured onto the courts. The event staff was out with towels and leaf blowers to dry off the courts and play resumed without incident.

“It affects me a lot,” Hiltzik said. “I like to think about a lot of other things than the tennis game, like playing inside or outside so that stuff is kind of tricky.”

It’s been a rough past two days for Puget. He lost the decisive singles match in three sets for the national championship Tuesday, in addition to falling Wednesday to Hiltzik. A sideshow to the match was, during the second and third sets, Puget having constant interaction with the chair umpire on a variety of issues.

Puget pleaded for crowd silence during his service motion and while the ball was in play as well as debating multiple close calls on the lines that didn’t go his way. He even went as far as asking the chair umpire, “Who hired her?” for the match, which he quickly apologized for.

Puget appeared to be in the driver’s seat of the match after winning the final three games of the first set and the first eight points of the second to push his lead to 2-0. Hiltzik would break Puget’s serve three times in the set, however, and win the final six games to even up the match.

Even with his match ending close to 10 p.m., Hiltzik will have one of the first matches in the morning on Thursday – an 11 a.m. matchup with No. 8 Henrique Cunha from Duke.

Stephen can be reached at [email protected] and @steve_bourbon.