For its final regular season weekend, the IU men’s tennis team went on the road to face two more Big Ten opponents.
With the Big Ten Tournament up next, the Hoosiers played two higher-ranked opponents and both got the best of the Hoosiers.
On Friday afternoon No. 30 Wisconsin swept No. 49 IU 7-0 at the Nielsen Tennis Stadium. On Sunday, although IU won the doubles point, No. 33 Minnesota came back and won 4-3 at the Baseline Tennis Center.
“The effort and the spirit of the team was great,” IU coach Jeremy Wurtzman said. “We really competed well in both matches, we just didn’t come away with enough matches to win.”
In their first matchup of the weekend, all six of the Hoosiers' singles matches were close on the scoreboard.
At Nos. 1, 5 and 6 the matchups went to a third set. Junior Raheel Manji lost his first set in a tiebreak playing at position one, but won his second set 6-3.
However he was not able to keep the momentum going and lost in the third set 6-2.
The other players that went to a third set were sophomore Oliver Sec and freshman Bennett Crane.
Senior Matthew McCoy and sophomore Antonio Cembellin lost their first sets in tiebreaks, both with the close scores of 9-7.
“Having home court advantage was nice for them, they had a lot of fans behind them,” Wurtzman said of Wisconsin. “There were a couple of points here and there that shifted the momentum.”
Following their third 7-0 defeat of the season, the Hoosiers traveled to Minneapolis to face the Golden Gophers.
Minnesota lost to Purdue 4-3 the Friday before facing IU at home. On March 5, IU beat Purdue 4-3 at the IU Tennis Center.
Playing outdoors, IU began the matchup strong with wins at Nos. 1 and 2 doubles. The Hoosiers secured the doubles point with a 7-3 tiebreaker win at position two.
In the singles matchups, IU couldn’t carry the momentum from its doubles win, and dropped four out of six matches.
Crane put the Hoosiers in the lead 2-0 with a straight-set win at position five.
Junior Keivon Tabrizi won his matchup at No. 4 singles in three sets to get the third point on the board for the Hoosiers.
Manji was close to a win at No. 1, but lost the second set in a tiebreak and later lost in the third set.
Up next IU will travel to West Lafayette, Indiana, for the Big Ten Tournament, which will begin on April 27.
The Hoosiers were seeded in the ninth spot and will play Minnesota once again in the first round of the tournament next Thursday at 9 a.m.
“It is nice that we only have a few days to then go back out and play again,” Wurtzman said. “There will not be much time to stew on it too long.”
