Northwestern fell 5-2 to Vanderbilt and 4-0 to Clemson on a weekend road trip to the southeast.
The Wildcats (2-5, 0-0 Big Ten) have now lost five-straight matches, following ranked losses to Harvard and Duke last weekend and a defeat to Louisville the previous Monday.
NU’s Friday clash against Vanderbilt (7-2, 0-0 SEC) started on the wrong foot, with the Commodores taking the doubles point. The No. 2 pairing of junior Chad Miller and graduate student Saiprakash Goli and the No. 3 pairing of freshmen Carter Pate and Vincent Yang each lost 6-3 sets.
In singles, straight-sets defeats from sophomore No. 1 Greyson Casey and No. 2 Goli put the ’Cats in a 3-0 hole. Senior No. 3 Felix Nordby put NU on the board with a 7-5, 6-3 victory. With the win, Nordby improved to 4-1 in singles on the season and is the only player on coach Arvid Swan’s squad with a winning singles record.
Pate secured his first college tennis singles victory in his fourth attempt, winning a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 battle at the No. 4 spot. With NU down 3-2, it needed wins from both No. 5 senior Max Bengtsson and No. 6 Miller.
After failing to serve out his match at 5-4 in the third set, Bengtsson ultimately lost a third-set tiebreak that consigned him to a 5-7, 6-0, 7-6(2) defeat — clinching victory for the Commodores.
Miller went on to drop a 10-point tiebreak played in lieu of a full third set, losing 3-6, 6-4, 10-7.
The ’Cats were back in action Sunday to face a hot Clemson (8-0, 0-0 ACC) team coming off upset wins over No. 17 South Carolina and No. 16 Michigan State.
NU lost the doubles point after Casey and Nordby were defeated at No. 1 and Pate and Yang lost at No. 3, falling to 2-5 on the season in doubles points.
Swan opted to tweak his singles lineup from Friday, inserting Goli at the No. 1 spot for his first career start atop the singles lineup. Casey moved down to No. 2.
The move failed to spark a change, as Goli quickly lost 6-2, 6-0 to the Tigers’ Noa Vukadin, the 51st-ranked singles player in the nation. Pate fell 6-3, 6-3 at No. 4, while Miller lost 6-2, 6-3 at No. 6. The rest of the matches went unfinished, with only Bengtsson at No. 5 taking a set.
NU next returns to Evanston for a nine-match homestand that will carry through to the beginning of Big Ten play in March. It will look to get back in the win column with a Saturday doubleheader against Illinois State and Indiana Indianapolis.
Email: elikronenberg2027@u.northwestern.edu
X : @EliKronenberg
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