COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – The Ursinus Men's Tennis team valiantly battled 10th-ranked Johns Hopkins on Saturday afternoon at the Ursinus Tennis Courts before eventually falling 7-2 in their final Centennial Conference match of the season.
The Bears record drops to 12-7 overall with the loss and they will conclude conference play with a 2-6 record. Prior to the contest, the Bears honored its lone senior on the team in
Noah Mandel. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays improved to 16-3 overall and 7-1 in Centennial action.
Hopkins won two of the three doubles matches to go up 2-1 headed into singles but it was not without a major challenge from the Bears. Mandel and freshman
Andrei Bogdan dropped an 8-1 decision to Andrew Tran and Karan Belday at No. 3 doubles before the No. 1 doubles team of junior
Lars Jespersen and
Will Oberholtzer were edged 8-6 by Daniel Ardila and Pranav Gadiraju. Juniors
Darby Rogers and
Ethan Yu dominated in their No. 2 doubles match by besting Zahari Stoimenov and Nick Charanjiva 8-3 to get a point for the Bears.
In singles, Jespersen fell 6-4, 6-2 to Ardila at the No. 1 spot and Yu was downed 6-4, 6-1 by Tran at No. 3 singles. Oberholtzer battled Gadiraju before dropping a 6-3, 7-5 No. 2 singles match that turned out to be the Blue Jays winning point. Rogers suffered a 6-4, 6-3 setback to Stoimenov at the No. 4 position and Bogdan outlasted Belday 6-2, 3-6, 10-6 at No. 5 singles to gain another point for the Bears. Mandel was defeated by Charanjiva in the No. 6 spot by a score of 6-3, 6-0.
