PHILADELPHIA -- The Cornell men's tennis team started day one of the ECAC Indoor Championships on a high note on Friday morning, sweeping Temple, 4-0, from the Hecht Tennis Center. With the victory, the No. 1 seeded Big Red moves on to the semifinals on Saturday at 3 p.m. to battle No. 4 Penn.
The opening doubles match swung in favor of the Big Red, as Adit Sinha and Nathan Mao rebounded from its first loss last weekend in Louisville with a 6-0 sweep of Adam Kresina and Maj Najvirt Kolaric, putting the Big Red in prime position to take the opening point of the match. The Owls would counter though at No. 3 doubles, with Pranav Nemani and Alberto Blumenschein handing Petar Teodorovic and Samuel Paquette their first loss of the season with a 6-2 victory to set up a decisive battle at No. 2 doubles between Cornell's Eric Verdes/Radu Papoe and Temple's Dante Russo/Gregoire Barerty. Verdes and Papoe stood tall at the No. 2 position, grabbing a 6-4 victory to head into singles play up 1-0 and swing the momentum back to Cornell heading into singles play.
Cornell continued to feed off the momentum early in singles play, as Samuel Paquette put the pedal down to knock off Paul Hannack in straight sets (6-4, 6-1) at No. 6 singles to put the Big Red up 2-0. Felipe Pinzon followed up Paquette with his fourth victory of 2024 at No. 5 singles with a 6-0, 6-2 win against Aayush Bhat, putting Cornell one win away from clinching the match. Nathan Mao would be the decider at the No. 4 position, matching up against Erden Er. And the junior got it done, taking a 6-3, 6-1 win to push Cornell to a 4-0 victory and drop the Owls to 3-5 on the year.
INSIDE THE OPPONENT: PENN
Coming in as the No. 4 seed, the Quakers rolled into the semifinals with a 4-1 victory over fellow Ivy foe and No. 5 seeded Dartmouth on Friday afternoon. Penn failed to gain the point in doubles as Dartmouth took No. 1 and No. 2 singles to secure a 1-0 lead heading into singles. Penn's Baylor Sai and Matthew Rutter did pick up the lone win (6-3) in doubles at the No. 3 position over Dartmouth's Miles Groom and Waleed Qadir.
Despite falling in doubles, Penn would turn up the heat in singles early, as Aaron Sandler (No. 3 singles) and Manfredi Graziani (No. 1 singles) each earned straight-set victories in matches that took less than an hour to complete, pushing Penn to a 2-1 lead. Kian Vakili would continue the trend of sweeps in No. 2 singles, earning a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Henry Ren to put the Quakers within one point of clinching the match. Matthew Rutter finished the job for Penn at No. 5 singles, taking a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Yujiro Onuma to move the Quakers into the semifinals.
UP NEXT
A win by the Big Red over the Quakers tomorrow puts them in the championship match scheduled for Sunday at 6 p.m. If Cornell loses, they will play in the third and fourth place match on Sunday at 3 p.m.
