Another deficit. Another pulsating comeback. Another defeat.
Two days after losing to Memphis in a deciding-match, deciding-set tiebreak following a comeback from 3-0 down, Northwestern once again revived itself from a seemingly insurmountable position, this time against No. 50 Notre Dame (10-2, 0-0 ACC), but ultimately fell 4-2.
While the comeback versus Memphis occurred across several courts, on Sunday, it was largely concentrated at the No. 3 position, where sophomore Greyson Casey stormed back from 5-1 down in the third set and saved three match points to force a tiebreak with NU on the brink of defeat.
Yet, after Casey failed to convert his own pair of match points and succumbed in the tiebreak 8-6, the Wildcats (5-7, 0-0 Big Ten) were left with the same stinging feeling of coming away empty-handed after a heroic effort.
“The guys are competing super hard,” coach Arvid Swan said. “I told them, ‘[We] just have to keep putting ourselves in a position. It’s gonna go our way eventually.’”
NU lost the doubles point, as it did Friday, but it wasn’t remotely competitive on Sunday. Casey and senior Felix Nordby lost 6-0 at No. 1, winning only seven points, while freshman Vincent Yang and sophomore Jackson Caldwell lost 6-1 at No. 3. The point lasted under 30 minutes.
Doubles has been a consistent area of concern for Swan’s team, as well as a harbinger of NU’s fate. In its last nine matches, the winner of the doubles point has gone on to win the match — the ’Cats are 3-6 over that period.
“Maybe just trying a couple new teams, just trying to get the energy into the doubles,” Casey said when asked how the team could address its doubles woes. “There wasn’t a lot of energy today.”
In singles, graduate student No. 1 Saiprakash Goli was the first to finish, losing 6-1, 6-3 to put the Fighting Irish up 2-0. However, Nordby at No. 2 and senior No. 5 Max Bengtsson each earned commanding victories, winning 6-2, 6-2 and 6-4, 6-4, respectively, to level the score.
Nordby and Bengtsson each also won against Memphis, and have been NU’s most reliable sources of singles points — Nordby is 8-1 on the season, while Bengtsson is 7-3.
“From the first point to the last, they don’t have any lapses in concentration,” Swan said of Nordby and Bengtsson. “They’re both really tough outs, because they don’t miss very much.”
In addition to those two, Casey also won his first set, meaning a first set from either junior No. 5 Chad Miller or No. 6 Caldwell would put NU on track for victory. Both, however, lost their first set in a tiebreak.
After dropping the first set, Caldwell fell away, dropping the first four games of the second and succumbing to a 7-6(1), 6-4 defeat.
Miller, on the other hand, fought back to take the second set 6-4. Trailing 3-2, the ’Cats needed both Miller and Casey to prevail, but the latter lost the second set 6-3 and went down an early break in the third.
Notre Dame’s big-serving, lefty No. 3 Chase Thompson found his range in the opening stages of the third set, punishing Casey with aggressive serves and forehands to open up a 5-1 lead.
Casey saved one match point at 1-5, 40-40 with an unreturnable serve, and then another at 2-5, 40-40 when he sent a forehand return down the line that may have landed wide but Thompson declined to call out, instead sending a forehand into the net.
That indecision appeared to unsettle Thompson over the next several games. At 3-5, the game reached deuce yet again, and Casey came up with a serve and crosscourt backhand combination to save yet another match point. With Thompson serving for the match a second time, the Notre Dame sophomore yielded a triad of forehand unforced errors to level the match at 5-5.
“I told myself that I wasn’t going to lose,” Casey said. “You just have to stay in the point as long as possible. Just make them hit one more ball.”
The strategy continued to pay dividends as the NU No. 3 held for 6-5. When Casey hit a backhand down-the-line passing shot on the run to go up 15-30 as Thompson served to stay in the match, his momentum appeared unstoppable. Yet, Thompson knuckled down and held for 6-6 when Casey narrowly missed a backhand down the line at deuce that would have sealed the match.
In the tiebreak, Casey earned another match point at 6-5 — this time on his serve. Yet, three points later, he netted a backhand and put his head in his hands, lamenting a loss that could very well have ended in a prodigious comeback victory.
“He’s growing every match,” Swan said of Casey. “He’s such a better player now than he was even at the beginning of the year.”
Miller’s match went unfinished with the NU man serving at 3-4 in the third set.
Later in the day, the ’Cats were back to face Chicago State. With the Cougars only carrying five players, NU stormed to a 6-0 victory that included a remarkable three double bagels — from Bengtsson at No. 3, Yang at No. 4, and sophomore Owen Megargee at No. 5.
Swan’s side dropped just six games across five singles matches.
Email: elikronenberg2027@u.northwestern.edu
X : @EliKronenberg
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— Men’s Tennis: Dramatic comeback falls short as Northwestern loses to Memphis
— Women’s Tennis: Northwestern overcomes 3-0 deficit to stun No. 30 Kansas
