If the Bearcats wanted to be America East champions, the top-seeded Bearcats were going to have to beat the team that sent them home in last year’s championship match.
The Binghamton University men’s tennis team took on the second-seeded Maryland-Baltimore County Retrievers and with the match tied 3-3, it all came down to one match: the fifth singles dual between Binghamton’s sensational freshman Arnav Jain and UMBC’s talented sophomore Fredi Voorman.
Voorman took the first set 6-4 and played solidly in the second set but Jain was able to sneak by with the 7-6 win to force a third set. Things looked to be taking a dramatic turn for the worst in the decisive set, however, when Jain began suffering from severe leg cramps and trailed 5-3.
“To be honest, it didn’t look good [at this point],” said BU head coach Adam Cohen.
But Jain, like a true champion, never lost hope or his will to fight through the pain, and with the help of some magnesium pills to alleviate the cramping, he stormed back to win four consecutive games and take the third set in shocking fashion, 7-5, propelling Binghamton to the AE Championship and a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
Cohen, in his second season with the Bearcats, will lead the Bearcats into the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2006. The former Minnesota assistant, who recruited Jain, Sven Vloedgraven, and Sebastian Dietz among others, set his goal very early to take the Bearcats back to the NCAAs.
“That was one of the goals at the beginning of the year, to get to the conference championship and to win it so that we got a chance to play in the NCAA tournament,” Cohen said. “We accomplished that goal, it feels good.”
Binghamton jumped to the early 1-0 lead against UMBC by securing the doubles point with ease. Faisal Mohamed and Gregoire Berner combined to play first doubles and defeated the team of David Jackson and Irfan Shamasidin, a duo which was 15-4 on the season, by the score of 8-3. Dietz and Vloedgraven then secured the doubles point with an 8-3 win over sophomore Fernando Ferreria and junior Nick Savage-Pollock from the second doubles spot.
“I thought we played great doubles,” said Binghamton University head coach Adam Cohen. “You could say that was the difference maker.”
With the doubles point determined, the rivals turned their attention to the singles duals. Ferreria roared out of the gate with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Berner at sixth singles to tie the match at 1-1. Binghamton responded through Dietz’s 6-3, 6-3 win over Jackson at fourth singles.
Binghamton’s 2-1 lead did not last very long however, as sophomore Moshe Levy went down to Shamasidin at third singles 6-4, 6-3. Then Binghamton was down 3-2 after sophomore Chris Meyer outdid Mohamed at first singles to keep UMBC alive while a focused Mohamed, after losing the first set, dominated the second set, 6-2. Mohamed seemed poised to take the third set before severe leg cramping set in. The captain, in what potentially could have been his last collegiate match ever, refused to retire and struggled through the rest of the dual, serving underhand at times and being unable to reach most returns, before finally falling 7-6, 2-6, 7-5.
Vloedgraven stepped up after dropping his first set 5-7 in his second singles dual with Pollock but maintained his confidence and rolled to consecutive 6-3, 6-3 set wins to take his duel and set up the decisive fifth singles match.
The previous day, fourth-seeded Boston University, which had eliminated No. 5 Hartford in the play-in match, managed only to steal a single set from the dominant Bearcats. Faisal Mohamed set the tone early at first singles with a commanding 6-2, 6-0 victory over senior Guilio Galloratti. Berner notched the victory at fourth singles with an easy 6-1, 6-2 win. Alex Dobrin then defeated senior Hans Sapra 6-3, 6-1 as Binghamton also swept the doubles point, thanks in large part to Vloedgraven and Dietz shutting their second doubles foes out, 8-0.
The impressive weekend improved Jain’s overall record in duals to an astounding 15-2, with nine of those wins being consecutively. Fellow freshman, Vloedgraven improved to 15-5 in duals.