ITHACA, N.Y. -- It will be a celebration at the Reis Tennis Center this weekend as Cornell men's tennis honors its four seniors while also looking to keep its hopes for an Ivy League title alive when it hosts No. 13 Harvard and Dartmouth. Cornell will kick off the weekend with its battle with the Crimson on Saturday, April 13, before closing its 2024 home slate against Dartmouth on Sunday, April 14. Both matches will begin at 1 p.m.

LAST TIME OUT: CORNELL SPLITS HOME AND AWAY AGAINST PENN, PRINCETON
Cornell is coming off two Ivy League matches in three days last weekend. The Big Red dominated No. 55 Penn at home with a 4-0 sweep before seeing its eight-match winning streak snapped with a 1-4 defeat on the road against No. 30 Princeton. Looking at the Penn match, the Big Red took the momentum early with wins in doubles from Radu Papoe / Samuel Paquette (6-3) and Petar Teodorovic / Eric Verdes (7-5) to clinch the first point of the match.

Singles action was no different for the home squad, as Adit Sinha earned the victory from the No. 2 spot after opponent Kian Vakili withdrew due to injury, and Papoe followed with a 6-0, 6-4 win over Manfredir Graziani to put Cornell within a point of clinching the match. And the honor of closing it out went to junior Nathan Mao, who rallied from a 4-3 deficit in the second set to take a 6-3, 7-6 (7-0) decision against Matthew Rutter from the No. 5 spot. The Big Red's victory was its first over the Quakers in Ithaca since 2016.  

The match against Princeton was a different story for the Big Red. Princeton came out of the gates quickly with victories at the No. 1 and No. 3 positions over Mao / Sinha (6-3) and Papoe / Paquette (6-2) in doubles to take a 1-0 lead. Cornell did get an early spark in singles off the racket of Felipe Pinzon, earning his team-high 11th win of the spring in a 6-4, 6-1 decision over Aleksander Mitric to tie the match at one. But Princeton took back the wave with wins for Fnu Nidunjianzan over Sinha (6-2, 6-4) and Sebastian Sec over Teodorovic (7-6, 6-3) to go up 3-1. With the pressure on, the ranked matchup between Papoe and Paul Inchauspe from the No. 1 spot was the one to decide if Cornell would survive. Inchauspe would make sure it did not happen, taking a 7-6, 6-4 victory to stop Cornell's roll. 

INSIDE THE IVY: HARVARD
Saturday's match will be the 87th all-time meeting between the Big Red and the Crimson. Harvard has had the edge overall with a 68-16 edge since the two Ivy League rivals first met in 1914 and has won the last three matches. Cornell will be looking for its first victory in conference play over Harvard since taking a 4-3 decision in Ithaca on April 15, 2018. 

Harvard comes into the weekend at 17-5 and the lone team unblemished in conference action at 3-0. The Crimson is also in the midst of a four-match winning streak after sweeping Yale (5-2) and Brown (7-0) last weekend. Diving into its schedule, Harvard has matched up against 12 teams ranked in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association poll, going 8-4. One of those wins came in a 4-2 decision over then-No. 8 Columbia at the ITA National Team Indoor Championships in February. 

Cooper Williams is a player to watch on both the singles and doubles side for the Crimson. He has impressed in his first season with a 7-3 record in the spring for the No. 1 position and comes in as the No. 12 ranked player in this week's rankings. The New York product has also won three straight matches and will look to take down Papoe for the second time this season after taking a 7-6 (7-4), 6-4 win in the finals of the ITA Super Regional Championships last October. Henry von der Schulenburg is the other Crimson singles player in the rankings at No. 73. A senior from Zurich, Switzerland, Schulenburg is 9-4 this spring and has won four straight matches. Shifting to doubles, Williams and Milavsky have led the charge with an impressive 20-8 record over the spring and fall seasons. Ranked as the No. 7 duo in Division I, Williams and Milavsky have struggled with a 7-6 record in the spring but have rattled off three straight wins. 

INSIDE THE IVY: DARTMOUTH
The Sunday afternoon showdown in Ithaca will be the 76th time the Big Red and the Big Green have squared off. Dartmouth holds the overall advantage (47-27-2), but Cornell has taken the last four head-to-head battles, including a 6-1 decision in Hanover in 2023.

Dartmouth limps into the weekend at 8-12 overall and has lost six of its last seven matches. The Big Green is also 1-2 in conference play after splitting against Brown (6-1) and Yale (1-6) and has not won a single match away from Hanover this season. 

Glancing at singles, sophomore Miles Groom leads the way with a 12-5 overall record and an 8-1 spot from the No. 4 position. Groom has lost four of his last five matches, including a 6-2, 6-1 defeat to Yale's Theo Dean. Alex Knox-Jones (11-5) and Yujiro Onuma (10-7) are the other two players with 10 or more wins in singles this season for Dartmouth. Groom and Waleed Qadir have been Dartmouth's most successful doubles team with a 9-2 clip and swept last weekend from the No. 3 position against Brown's Nicolas Laffont / James Lian (6-4) and Yale's Roee Benya / Jim Ji (6-2). 

UP NEXT
Cornell will close the regular season with one final weekend of Ivy League action at Brown (Saturday, April 20) and Yale (Sunday, April 21). Both matches will begin at 1 p.m.