Needing a near-perfect effort to top the No. 4 doubles pairing in the country, Illinois’ Tim Kopinski and Ross Guignon brought copious amounts of energy and passion to the Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex on Thursday.

However, they didn’t execute enough plays down the stretch and lost to Virginia’s Mac Styslinger and Jarmere Jenkins in the first round of the NCAA doubles tournament.

“It was an entertaining match in terms of the way (Kopinski) and (Guignon) played,” head coach Brad Dancer said. “In terms of the match, it comes down to execution and I don’t think we returned particularly well and TK didn’t serve very well in some games and that was the difference.”

The difference was razor sharp as the final line read 6-3, 5-7 (10), 6-3. The Illini couldn’t break the Cavaliers’ serve even once and allowed them to fall behind in the first and third sets.

The Illini started off the match a game down because of an overhanging unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Guignon following the team’s loss to Vanderbilt in the Round of 32 in the NCAA tournament. Each team defended its own serve until the very end of the set where Virginia broke Kopinski’s serve to increase its lead to 5-3.

“(Styslinger’s) serve stayed pretty low and we struggled a bit with that,” Guignon said. “(Jenkins’) serve we should have broken, we didn’t capitalize. We were playing a little scared like ‘This is our chance,’ rather than going and taking it from them.”

Styslinger and Jenkins pounded the middle of the court whenever possible in the first set but the Illini made the adjustment to cover the middle in the second set. This allowed Guignon and Kopinski to go a perfect six-for-six in defending serves and forced a set-deciding tiebreaker.

Virginia jumped out to a 5-2 lead but three consecutive errors and an Illinois winner gave the Illini duo a 6-5 lead. The teams went back and forth and each staved off two set points from the other before the Illini broke through with two consecutive points at 10-10 to force a third set.

While the Illini were fired up to be hanging around for a third set, they came out sluggish to start the third set. Guignon had medical treatment for a nagging knee injury late in the second set, and Kopinski was broken again early in the third to put the Cavaliers’ lead at 3-0.

After each holding serve for five games, the Illini had their backs against the wall down 5-3. Illinois earned two quick points to go up 0-30 and incite thunderous cheering from the home team crowd. Virginia would fight back to force deuce and on its fourth match point of the game, the Cavaliers took home the victory.

“There’s a standard we want to play at, and for the most part we were there,” Guignon said. “But if you play a team this good and you’re not there 100 percent, you’re not going to win.”

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