Chamblee’s Jacob Dorland battled back from two 3-4 deficits against Pope’s Taha Arif at No. 1 singles to sweep the match in helping the Bulldogs sweep the Pope Greyhounds 3-0 in second round Class 5A boys’ tennis state tournament play at Chamblee on Monday afternoon.

The match took almost two and a half hours to complete with some hard-fought matchups between the two teams.

Dorland’s comeback came with the Bulldogs leading 1-0 in the match with Pope via a 6-2, 6-2 win at No. 1 doubles by Alex Coursey and William Hackney over Pope’s Alex Barber and Sid Balachindara.

Trailing 4-5 after Arif broke his serve, Dorland began to climb back by breaking back against Arif to knot the match at 5-5. He then served to go up 6-5 to put Arif back at the service line with the set on the line. Dorland got the second consecutive break of Arif’s serve to claim a 7-5 first set win.

Arif got out to a 3-1 lead on Dorland in the second set before Dorland put together another rally. Dorland broke Arif’s serve for the second consecutive time and sixth time overall to knot the match at 4-4. He then served to take a 5-4 advantage to once again put Arif under pressure on his serve with the match on the line.

Dorland got the service break with a nice shot out of the reach of Arif to claim the 6-4 win in the second set and the point for the Bulldogs 2-0 lead.

Minutes later the Chamblee duo of Sid Hore and Owen Flake closed out the match sweeping the No. 2 doubles point 6-2, 6-2 over Pope’s Jake Kaplan and Tristan Slowly.

Landon Marcus was in the third set against Pope’s Jordan Mahedeo after splitting the first wo sets 6-3 and 2-6. The match was called after Chamblee’s No. 2 doubles closed out the win.

The Bulldogs (10-3) move on to the Elite Eight and will host the winner of Glynn Academy and Habersham Central at a date, site and time to be determined.

In other DeKalb tennis Class 5A state playoff action the Lady Bulldogs dropped a 3-0 road decision to the Pope Lady Greyhounds and the Lakeside Vikings (11-9) fell 3-0 to Johns Creek.