This weekend, the Binghamton University women’s tennis team split its matches, beating Niagara University 6-1 and falling 5-2 to the University at Buffalo. The men’s squad dropped both of its matchups at home, racking up only a single point and falling by a score of 6-1 to Illinois State University before being shut out by Dartmouth College 7-0.

The women started their trip to Buffalo on a high note Friday afternoon against Niagara, winning five of six singles matches and convincingly sweeping all three doubles matchups. The singles victories were all achieved in straight sets by seniors Jillian Santos (6-3, 6-3) and Marina Bykovskaya (7-5, 6-3), sophomore Jennifer Fridman (6-1, 6-4) and freshmen Katherine Medianik (6-1, 6-0) and Missy Edelblum (6-0, 6-1). It was a similar story in doubles as Fridman and freshman Taylor Hollander got a quick-fire 8-1 win to start things off with Bykovskaya and Medianik following it up with an 8-3 win. Santos and Edelblum finished things up at No. 1 doubles with a 8-4 victory.

But on Saturday afternoon it was a different story as the Bearcats lost four of their singles matches and all three of their doubles matches against Buffalo. Bykovskaya staged an impressive comeback to take her singles match. Down a set, Bykovskaya forced the next set into tiebreakers and dispatched her opponent in the third and final set winning 6-3, 6-7 (7-9), 10-4. Hollander was the other victor for the Bearcats as she won her match in straight sets (6-1, 6-3).

“It was kind of a frustrating day [on Saturday],” BU head coach Libby McGovern said. “We weren’t able to execute the way we wanted to in some of our matches, but Buffalo is a strong team and they are good opponents.”

McGovern said that the focus of the team right now is on self-improvement and getting ready for the America East tournament.

“We are working on specific things in practice we need to improve on,” McGovern said. “It’s more of a focus on ourselves than our opponents. We are still working on adding things for our games to get ready for our conference tournament at the end of April so we are working on being more aggressive in doubles and playing to our strengths and exploiting our opponents’ weaknesses in singles and kind of utilizing our strategy in all of our matches so we are still working on things about us and not really focusing so much upon our opponents.”

Meanwhile, the men’s team fell to Illinois State University on Friday by a score of 6-1. The Redbirds won two of the three double matches to take the doubles point and then went on to win five of their six singles matches in straight sets. Senior Rafael Rodrigues was the only victor for the Bearcats in singles, winning his match 6-0, 6-3 before pairing up with senior Alper Alimoglu to win a doubles match 8-5.

The Bearcats were then swept by Dartmouth College 7-0 on Saturday. BU started the day on the right foot, with the top doubles pair of juniors Ruben Devos and Bastian Bornkessel earning a tight 9-8 victory over Dartmouth’s top pair, Michael Laser and Xander Centenari. But Dartmouth went on to win the other two doubles matches and take all six of its singles matches.

Binghamton head coach Adam Cohen struggled to find positives in his team’s performance during the weekend and said that there was much room for improvement.

“We are having a hard time trying to finish out sets,” he said. “That is something we need to work on.”

This weekend, the men’s team is set to travel to North Carolina to face North Carolina State University at noon on Saturday and University of North Carolina Wilmington at noon on Sunday. The women’s team is set to play St. Bonaventure University on the road at 1 p.m. Saturday.