CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The men's tennis team will return to action this weekend at the four-day ECAC Division I Men's Tennis Championship, hosted by Harvard. Cornell is one of 10 competing teams in the annual event, which features eight nationally ranked teams. The tournament starts Friday and runs through Monday.
Cornell (3-3) is seeded fifth after moving up two spots to 63rd in the latest Intercollegiate Tennis Association national rankings. The Big Red will bypass the play-in round and start off at 8 a.m. Saturday against fourth-seeded and 57th-ranked Princeton in the quarterfinals.
Colin Sinclair is a team-best 4-1 in singles for the Big Red. All of the team's matches at the Nos. 4 and 5 positions have involved Sinclair and
Chris Vrabel, who is 3-2.
Dylan Brown is also 3-2 from the No. 6 spot. In doubles, Sinclair and five-time All-Ivy League selection
Sam Fleck are a perfect 4-0, while
Quoc-Daniel Nguyen and
Stefan Vinti are 3-1 from the No. 3 spot. Cornell won the ECAC title in 2013, when the event was last held at its own Reis Tennis Center.
The Tigers are off to a quick 5-0 start to the season. Denver is the only ranked opponent Princeton has faced so far, with the team's other victories coming against Colorado College, William & Mary, Bucknell and Furman. The ITA has Princeton's Luke Gamble ranked 105th in the country in singles. Princeton holds a dominating 88-9-1 record against Cornell since the squads first met in 1906, but the Big Red has won six of the last eight meetings.
The winner of the Cornell-Princeton match will play at 11 a.m. Sunday against one of three teams. Eighth-seeded and 61st-ranked George Washington — whom the Big Red has already defeated this season — and ninth-seeded Yale square off in a play-in match Friday morning in New Haven, Conn. The winner of that match will then play host Harvard, the top seed and nation's No. 30 team, at 11 a.m. Saturday. The victor there proceeds to play the Cornell-Princeton winner in the semifinals. The loser of the Cornell-Princeton match will play Harvard, GW or Yale at 8 a.m. Sunday. There will be just two matches Monday — the third-place match at 9 a.m. and the championship at noon.
Other teams competing in the tournament are second-seeded and 50th-ranked Dartmouth, third-seeded and 51st-ranked Penn, sixth-ranked and 68th-ranked Brown, seventh-seeded and 74th-ranked St. John's and 10th-seeded Monmouth.
