Up a break in his third set, Kentucky junior Alex Musialek felt all eyes at the Hilary J. Boone Tennis Complex turn toward him.

It was the largest crowd Musialek said he’s ever played in front of, he said. The stakes were as high as ever, too: a trip to the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16 on the line against Louisville.

UK head coach Dennis Emery said Musialek feeds off intensity so after every point he won, he’d scream.

He never let up.

The screams of Come on! and Let’s go! got louder and louder until, 18 minutes after the crowd turned in to Musialek, his forehand winner just inside the baseline clinched UK’s second-straight Sweet 16.

Musialek won his third set over Viktor Maksimcuk, 6-0, and the Cats ended up beating Louisville, 4-3.

“At the beginning of the third set, I just tried to focus on every single point and I knew that if I broke him, it’d be easier for me to hold until the end of the match,” said Musialek, who won, 5-7, 7-5, 6-0. “I just tried to be really, really intense. I fought on every single point. Every point was a big, big point.”

The match was even closer than the 4-3 score would indicate. The teams split the first two doubles matches before Musialek and Anthony Rossi clinched the point for the Cats by beating Alejandro Callagari and Robert Hall, 8-6.

When the match went to a rain delay midway into the singles portion, UK was up in three singles matches, and so were the Cards.

Little changed once play resumed. Alberto Gonzalez won his match over Hall, 6-2, 6-4. Simon Childs beat Cox, and Rossi closed out his win over Calligari almost immediately thereafter. When Andrew Carter beat Jomby, 7-5, 6-4, the only two matches left were on the two center courts.

No. 6 Quigley won his first set against No. 16 Austen Childs in a tiebreak after both held their serves throughout. Then Childs got the match’s first tiebreak to go up 2-1 in the second set, and he cruised to win the second, 6-2.

With Quigley serving at 4-5, Childs got a dramatic break to give himself the win which momentarily tied the match at 3-3. But seconds later on the next court over, Musialek’s winner clinched the match.

“It’s the best feeling I’ve ever felt immediately after a loss,” Quigley said.

Emery said he can only remember one other crowd in his 29-year tenure as the UK coach which compared to Saturday’s: a match against Georgia “in 1985 or 1986,” he said. UK said the official attendance was 686, and it seemed almost evenly split between the two fan bases.

It was the two teams’ first meeting since 2005, and both Emery and Louisville coach Rex Ecarma said they’re in favor of renewing the series, and the schools have been in ongoing discussions for a while. But they stand at odds on how a series would work.

Emery said he’s proposed a series to rotate between Lexington and a neutral site; he said he doesn’t want to lose a home match every other year because UK plays so many road matches already in the Southeastern Conference.

Ecarma wants it to rotate each year between the two campuses, “like every other sport UofL and UK play against each other,” he said.

“What we’re doing is robbing the tennis community of an amazing experience like this,” Ecarma said. “All of these kids and all of these people will be talking about this match all summer, and there’s no guarantee that it will ever happen again.”

No matter when these two teams play each other again, Emery said the ball is in Louisville’s court. “It’s so easy to see why this is good for our sport. You’d have to be blind not to see it,” he said.

The Cats’ next match will be Thursday at Stanford University, when they play the winner of the Florida-Miami (Fla.) match, delayed Saturday due to rain.

Until then, Emery said his team doesn’t have any major holes to fill. They played as well as they have all season on Saturday, he said.

Especially Musialek.

“We’re in the top 10 because we won matches like this all year long,” Emery said. “Musialek clinched our win against Auburn in SEC quarterfinals. He’s been in this situation many times and he responds very, very well. I don’t think it can be any better.”