The Binghamton University men’s tennis team rolled over James Madison and Old Dominion this past weekend to improve its record to 13-1 on the season. The Bearcats defeated both teams by a score of 6-1, winning five out of six singles contests in each match.
“We won both matches 6-1, but the Old Dominion match was a little bit closer than the score indicated,” said head coach Adam Cohen. “Sven [Vloedgraven] won a very close first set 7-5, Moshe [Levy] won his first set 7-6 and then Gilbert [Wong] and Alex [Haggai] won two tiebreakers in the second sets to prevent a third. If some of these go the other way we have a completely different match, so it was good for us to win those.”
BU was just as impressive in doubles play as they were in singles. They were able to win the doubles point against both teams, going a combined 5-1 for the weekend.
“As a whole our doubles are continuing to get better,” Cohen said. “Our team knows that if we get ahead 1-0, then we’ve got a pretty good shot at somehow finding three more points out of the six.”
Reigning America East Player of the Week Gilbert Wong and junior Arnav Jain won all their matches over the weekend and have been key players for the Bearcats throughout this season. Wong has posted a 25-6 overall record while going 13-0 in dual matches, and Jain is 24-3 overall and 13-0 in duals.
“Both Gilbert and Arnav have played well,” Cohen said. “They’re both very talented players and both very good dual match players. I hope that they can continue their play throughout the rest of this season.”
The Bearcats finally cracked the national rankings two weeks ago, coming in at No. 63. Despite not losing a match since then, they have disappeared from the list of the country’s best teams. Cohen stated, however, that it’s more important to play well on the court than to look good on paper.
“For us it doesn’t matter so much,” Cohen said. “At the end of the year we just want to be playing in the NCAA tournament and when the final rankings come out after the NCAA tournament is over, we hope to be in there then because that will put us in a position to play some good events the following season.”
The Bearcats next hit the road to take on three Ivy League foes in a one-week span. First up will be UPenn on Wednesday, followed by Yale on Sunday and then No. 63 Harvard on Tuesday.
“We’d like to finish out well against the Ivy teams,” Cohen said. “We’re 4-1 right now and we play all eight of them this year. These last three matches are going to be tough, but I think our guys will be especially looking forward to the Harvard match. They’re still in the rankings and if we want to climb back in there before the end of the season, beating them at their place would be a good opportunity to do that.”