USD’s Noriega Claims Win in Final : Tennis: Tournament championship is Torero’s second in as many years. He also won in the doubles final.

SAN DIEGO —  Jose Luis Noriega doesn’t allow himself to get worked up for a tennis match. Whether it’s playing in the Davis Cup, as he did for Peru two weeks ago, or approaching a tournament that is trivial by comparison: the San Diego Intercollegiate Invitational.

Excitement, anxiety, pressure. Noriega said those words didn’t exist in his bilingual vocabulary. Win? Yes.

Noriega, the University of San Diego’s No. 1 player, captured his second consecutive San Diego Intercollegiate championship in the No. 1-2 singles draw, then teamed with Kevin Bradley to win the No. 1 draw in doubles Sunday at USD’s East Courts.

“I’m sure everybody expected me to win,” said Noriega, a junior who had won a five-set Davis Cup doubles match against Brazil 13 days earlier. “Usually, when I play a match I don’t ask myself that. I don’t get nervous. And if I lose, the better man won.”

Top-seeded Noriega had to fight back from a 4-love deficit in a second-set tiebreaker to beat No. 3-seed Steve Campbell of Rice, 6-4, 7-6 (7-5). Then he joined Bradley in beating UC Riverside’s Kevin Klabunde and Barry Buss, 6-4, 6-3, for the doubles championship. “Sometimes its hard to play in tournaments that are not as important as others, especially if there were not the best college players in the nation,” Noriega said. “But it’s always a challenge for me. I’m pretty happy. There are a lot of good players who will underestimate their opponent and lose in this tournament.”

Noriega’s championships were all the Toreros could muster among the six draws: 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6 singles, and 1, 2 and 3 doubles. USD, which had earned the team championship the three previous years, finished second, two points ahead of San Diego State. The Aztecs got championships from Jeff Belloli at No. 5-6 singles and Kerry Safdie and Joe McDonough at No. 3 doubles.

But SDSU might have contended for team title had it not suffered a rash of injuries. Five players were nagged by minor maladies, three of whom came up with strained triceps muscles near the shoulder. Ricardo Herrera and Michael Sass, both in the No. 1 singles draw, were two of them. Also, Herrera and Sass were wearing air casts and playing with torn ankle ligaments.

The most costly was a shoulder injury to Dax Peterson, who was part of the Aztecs’ top-seeded doubles team in the No. 1 draw and was top seeded at No. 5-6 singles. Peterson and his partner, Belloli, were upset by Klabunde and Buss, 6-2, 6-2, in the third round and Peterson had to retire when he had match point against Rice’s Raimundo Riojas in the fourth round of singles.

“He had triple match point, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to play another match; not serving at 50%,” SDSU Coach Hugh Bream said. “Everybody’s a little frustrated because they’ve really been working hard.”

The Aztecs had four No. 1 seeds, more than anyone in the 17-team tournament, but only Safdie and McDonough lived up to their billing as they defeated Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Ricardo Reyes and Mark Nielsen, 6-2, 6-3, in the final. With his doubles partner, Peterson, out of No. 5-6 singles, Belloli stepped in to take the title, beating Willie Dan of Rice in the final, 6-4, 7-6 (8-6).

Campbell is the only college player to take Noriega to a tiebreaker thus far, but Noriega said he didn’t waver when he was down 4-love. But in a uncharacteristic display of emotion he said out loud: “Let’s go now! He’s not going to make another point.”

“I kind of lost my concentration there, “ he said later. “But even though (Campbell) was up, I was confident and I was playing more consistent than he was.”