ITHACA, N.Y. -- It's moving weekend in the Ivy League tennis, as the top four teams are scheduled to play each other over two days in the race for a conference title and the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Cornell sits in the middle of it, hosting fellow second-place contenders No. 73 Dartmouth on Saturday and No. 41 Harvard on Sunday, with both matches set for 1 p.m. at the Reis Tennis Center
Cornell, ranked No. 31 in the latest ITA rankings, is 15-3 on the season with ranked wins over Louisville, Yale, Penn (twice), Memphis and Middle Tennessee. Cornell swept its weekend set this past weekend, knocking off No. 37 Princeton 4-2 on the road before toppling No. 39 Penn 4-3 at home.
Sophomore
Rodrigo Fernandes, ranked No. 98 nationally, is 20-10 on the season from the top spot.
Eric Verdes (9-9) and
Petar Teodorovic (13-8) have also been steady in the top-half of the lineup, while
Rethin Pranav Senthil Kumar (21-5),
Felipe Pinzon (15-7) and
Aman Sharma (10-7) have done damage in the bottom half. The doubles tandem of Senthil Kumar and
Rushil Khosla is 16-5 on the season, while the NCAA qualifying pair of Pinzon and Teodorovic is off to a 17-3 start. Fernandes and
Eric Verdes sport a 10-5 record, with all three doubles teams ranked at some point in the season. Big Red head coach Silviu Tanasiou sports a 201-109 career record (.648) entering the weekend.
Dartmouth enters Saturday's match with a 15-8 record and a 3-1 conference mark with league wins over Penn, Princeton and Brown. The doubles tandem of Miles Groom and Henry Ren are ranked No. 79 in the nation and boast a 17-7 record. That duo holds down the top two spots in the order, with Ren sporting an 11-14 record in the top spot while Groom sports a 23-7 mark while playing primarily at No. 2 for head coach Justin DeSanto's squad. The Big Green holds a 48-30-1 lead in the all-time series, with the Big Red winning six consecutive matches between the programs.
Harvard head coach Andrew Rueb's team brings a 13-10 overall mark and a 3-1 Ivy record into Saturday's contest at Columbia. With wins over Michigan State, Purdue, Michigan, Princeton and Yale (twice), the Crimson are in the mix for their league-best 34th Ivy title. The Crimson feature a pair of top-100 ranked singles players, with Rohan Murali (20-8) at No. 52 and Nathan Blokhin (22-7) at No. 99. Harvard leads the all-time series between the programs 64-12 and has won five straight.
