PRINCETON, N.J. — The men's tennis team will take a perfect early-season record into the three-day ECAC Division I Men's Tennis Championship this weekend, hosted by Princeton. The Big Red is one of eight teams competing in the annual event, which features seven Ivy League programs and St. John's. The tournament starts Friday and runs through Sunday, and all matches will be streamed on the
Ivy League Digital Network.
Cornell (6-0) is seeded second and has received votes for the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's Top 25 rankings, with the nation's first traditional Top-75 rankings will be released following this weekend's competition. The Big Red can match the second-best start to the dual season in program history if it wins the ECAC championship this weekend. The last time Cornell was 9-0 was in 2004, and the best start in program history was 10 straight wins in 2001.
The Big Red starts play at 3 a.m. Friday against seventh-seeded Yale. Senior
Bernardo Casares Rosa has yet to lose a match this season. He's 5-0 in from No. 6 singles and has an identical record from the No. 1 doubles position alongside classmate
Chris Vrabel. Senior
Colin Sinclair is also 5-0 at No. 3 singles, as the Big Red has used an identical singles lineup for all six matches to date and performed to a dominating tune of 27-6.
Yale is 4-1 to start the season with its lone loss coming to Loyola Marymount on Feb. 4. That match was bookended by a pair of victories over Army West Point and Furman that weekend, with the Bulldogs' other victories coming in January against William & Mary and Buffalo. The Bulldogs have been strong from the top of the singles lineup early, where Tyler Lu advanced to the Round of 16 in the fall's regional championships and is 4-0 in No. 1 singles in dual matches. Ziqi Wang is also 4-0 from No. 2 singles.
The winner of the Cornell-Yale match will play at 3 p.m. Saturday against the winner of Friday's quarterfinal between Princeton and Harvard, while the losers will clash at 6 p.m. The Tigers are 2-3 with wins against Rice and VCU and losses against 18th-ranked Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin — of which the latter two will oppose Cornell later this spring. Harvard is 5-3.
Sunday's matches are scheduled for 8 a.m. (seventh place), 10 a.m. (third place), 1 p.m. (championship) and 4 p.m. (fifth place). The four teams Cornell could play on Sunday are top-seeded and 19th-ranked Columbia, fourth-seeded Penn, fifth-seeded Dartmouth and eighth-seeded St. John's.
The Big Red last won the ECAC tournament in 2013, which was also the last time it was staged at Reis Tennis Center in Ithaca, N.Y. Cornell finished second in last year's competition, defeating St. John's and Harvard before suffering a 5-1 loss to Princeton in the championship match.
