Men’s Tennis

Northwestern has had a travel-intensive start to its winter season.

It took six matches, but the No. 30 Wildcats (3-4) finally opened at home Sunday afternoon against the No. 11 Duke Blue Devils (6-0). Home-court advantage at the Combe Tennis Center wasn’t enough for the NU however, as they fell 5-2 to a deep Blue Devils squad.

In spite of the loss, coach Arvid Swan was still upbeat about playing in familiar territory.

“Even with the weather, we still had a good amount of people come out to see the match, which we appreciate,” Swan said. “It makes a difference.”

Duke, who boasts four nationally-ranked singles players, took five of six singles matches to run away with the victory, but the final line betrayed a strong effort by the Cats in Swan’s eyes.

“We were in a position to win the match at the end. We just couldn’t quite come up with it,” he said.

It began with doubles, where NU sophomore Alp Horoz and junior Mihir Kumar quickly dropped their set 6-2 to Duke’s Chris Mengel and Bruno Semenzato and put the Cats in an early hole.

Sophomore Sam Shropshire and senior Alex Pasareanu were able to tie things up at 1 after claiming a 7-5 victory at No. 2, setting the stage for the duo of sophomore Strong Kirchheimer and junior Fedor Baev to win the doubles point for the Cats. They claimed a key break point against Duke’s Raphael Hemmeler and Nicolas Alvarez to fend off defeat and tie the set 5-5. The two teams traded games to force the set into a tiebreaker, where Kirchheimer and Baev fell behind 6-3 before rallying back to 6-6.

“We just focused on our game,” Baev said of their play in doubles. “Listen to the coaches, follow their calls and just execute it as well as we can.”

The tiebreaker continued back and forth until Baev hit a powerful winner to win the tiebreaker 12-10, giving the Cats the doubles point and eliciting a collective roar from Baev, Kirchheimer and the home crowd.

“I thought the guys, to clinch the match, did a really good job,” Swan said. “There were ups and downs within that breaker and they continued to execute under pressure.”

In singles, freshman Logan Staggs, Kumar and Kirchheimer fell in straight sets to three ranked Blue Devil opponents, putting NU’s back to the wall with a 3-1 deficit until Shropshire eased the pressure by winning in the No. 1 spot.

Against national No. 36 Jason Tahir, Shropshire got off to a strong start with a 6-1 first set and battled the second set to a tiebreak. Down 6-2 in that tiebreak, Shropshire won four straight points to take the set back from the brink before repeatedly making big shots to grind out a 13-11 tiebreak win, much to the crowd’s delight.

“It was long, but it was good to win that match, help the team momentum-wise,” he said.

After Shropshire’s big win, the Cats found themselves trailing 3-2 with a chance to win the two remaining singles matches in their third sets. Horoz and Baev had the crowd behind them but were unable to capitalize; Horoz ran out of steam against Duke’s Josh Levine in a 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 defeat to clinch the match for the Blue Devils, and Baev lost a tough third set to Mengel to fall 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 and set the final margin at 5-2.

The match was the third-straight loss for NU against a top-15 opponent after losing Friday evening at No. 14 Notre Dame (3-1), 4-3. The Fighting Irish sport two top-10 doubles pairings, but the Cats were able to fight to the third doubles set before Pasareanu and Shropshire lost to the No. 9 duo of Eddy Covalschi and Josh Hagar to concede the doubles point.

NU found itself down 3-2 with two singles matches to play after wins by Staggs and Horoz and losses by Kumar and Baev. Both Shropshire and Kirchheimer won second-set tiebreaks to force third sets in their matches, but Shropshire ultimately fell to Notre Dame’s No. 37 Quentin Monaghan, 5-7, 7-6 (8-6), 4-6 to seal the match for the Irish.

The Cats got back on track later in the day with a quick 4-0 win over local opponent University of Illinois – Chicago (1-4) Sunday night after claiming the doubles point and straight-sets singles wins by Pasareanu, Kumar and Shropshire.

NU has fought through a tough, road-heavy slate this season and is looking forward to some softer matches at home heading into Big Ten play.

“We’ve played a lot of tough opponents, gotten a lot of experience,” Shropshire said following the Duke match. “We’re going to take that forward with us.”

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