ITHACA, N.Y. -- The final two matches of the regular season are on tap for Cornell men's tennis, as the Big Red heads to Providence to battle the Brown Bears on Saturday before shipping up to Connecticut to face Yale on Sunday.

#33 CORNELL at BROWN
SITE: Pizzitola Sports Center - Providence, R.I.
DATE and TIME: Saturday, April 20 at 1 p.m.
RECORDS: Cornell (16-6, 3-2 Ivy League), Brown (5-17, 0-4 Ivy League)
SERIES RECORD: Brown leads, 34-32

#33 CORNELL at #68 YALE
SITE: Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center - New Haven, Conn.
DATE and TIME: Sunday, April 21 at 1 p.m.
RECORDS: Cornell (16-6, 3-2 Ivy League), Yale (11-9, 2-2 Ivy League)
SERIES RECORD: Yale leads, 57-23-2

LAST TIME OUT: CORNELL CLOSES HOME SCHEDULE WITH SPLIT
The Big Red closed out its 2024 home slate with a split against Harvard and Dartmouth last weekend from the Reis Tennis Center. Cornell fell to the Crimson by a score of 4-2 on Saturday before turning around and sweeping the Big Green to finish with ten or more wins in matches played in Ithaca for the third straight season. 

Cornell went 3-3 over the two matches in doubles, with each tandem going 1-1. Radu Papoe and Samuel Paquette won in Saturday's match with a 6-4 decision over David Lins and Alan Yim, securing the duo's eighth victory. The Big Red had a better go in doubles action Sunday against the Big Green. Petar Teodorovic and Eric Verdes secured their eighth win as a duo this spring with a 6-3 victory over Henry Ren and Alex Knox-Jones, while Nathan Mao and Adit Sinha snapped their three-match losing streak with a 6-3 win over Christian Guerrero Alvarez and Hikaru Takeda.

Switching to singles action, the Big Red went 5-3 combined over the two matches. Papoe continued his role as the top player in the lineup, earning a 2-0 record, highlighted by avenging his loss to Harvard's Cooper Williams earlier this season at the ITA Super Regional finals with a 6-1, 7-5 decision. Nathan Mao was the other Big Red player to go undefeated in singles on the weekend. The junior took down the Crimson's Melchior Delloye (7-6 (8-6), 6-1) on Saturday before cruising on Sunday in a sweep of Dartmouth's Yunior Onuma (6-3, 6-2) to move to 8-5 on the year. Samuel Paquette earned the other win on the weekend with a 6-2, 6-2 sweep of Dartmouth's Hikaru Takeda in his first action in the lineup since March 17 against Quinnipiac. 

ITA RANKINGS UPDATE
With its split on the weekend, Cornell dropped three spots to No. 33 in Tuesday's ITA team rankings. Five other Ivy League squads fit inside this week's rankings, including Columbia (No. 8), Harvard (No. 13), Princeton (No. 27), Penn (No. 66), and Yale (No. 68). Looking at singles, junior Radu Papoe stayed put at No. 13 despite upsetting No. 12 Cooper Williams last Saturday. Classmate Adit Sinha slipped four spots to No. 89 after falling to Harvard's Henry Von Der Schulenburg. 

INSIDE THE IVY: BROWN
Saturday's match in Providence will be the 67th all-time meeting between the Bears and the Big Red. Cornell has had Brown's number in recent history with wins in the last twelve matches, including a 4-0 sweep in its trip to Brown in 2022. 

The Bears come into Saturday at 5-17 overall and the lone winless team in Ivy League action at 0-4. Brown also had its season-long losing streak extended to six with road losses to Princeton (7-0) and Penn (4-0) last weekend. Senior Chun Lam leads the Brown singles unit with a career-high 12 wins this season. Five of those victories have come from either the No. 5 or No. 6 position. Junior Alex Finkelstein (9-15) and sophomore Noah Hernandez (9-17) are the two other Bears on the threshold of ten victories this spring.

Looking into doubles, Hernandez and Lam have been Brown's most successful doubles tandem with a 10-6 mark. The two have also won six out of their last 10 matches. Finkelstein and sophomore Zander Bravo also have excelled, posting an 8-6 mark from the No. 1 position. 

INSIDE THE IVY: YALE
Sunday's dual in New Haven will be the 83rd all-time meeting between the Bulldogs and the Big Red. Despite the lopsided series record, the Big Red has won 11 consecutive matches and has not suffered a loss in New Haven since the 2009-10 season. 

Yale comes into the weekend at 11-9 overall and is fifth in the Ivy League standings at 2-2. The Bulldogs are the No. 68 ranked team in the country, according to the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, and have not lost a match in the Cullen-Heyman Tennis Center. Sophomore Vignesh Gogineni is the lone player ranked in singles (No. 105) and is coming off a 6-3, 6-2 upset over Princeton's Paul Inchauspe last weekend. Theo Dean is another standout player in singles with eleven victories this season but had his six-match winning streak snapped by Princeton's Top Nidunjianzan.

Shifting to doubles, Aidan Reilly and Dean have paired up as the Bulldogs top tandem. Sitting 72nd in the latest ITA rankings, the junior and senior have won eight matches this season and upset then No. 32-ranked Filippos Astreinidis/Paul Inchauspe of Princeton to help secure the doubles point last Sunday.

UP NEXT
The Big Red will have to wait and see if their name will appear during the 2024 NCAA Men's Tennis Team Selection Show on Monday, April 29 at 6 p.m. on NCAA.org. If selected, it will be the first time in program history that Cornell has gone to back-to-back NCAA tournaments.