The big question of the National Basketball Association is: who will be the top seed from the West? For the America East Conference, however, the big question remains: who will the top seed in the AE men’s tennis tournament?
This weekend may give some answers as the Binghamton University men’s tennis team (10-9) hosts conference rivals Maryland-Baltimore County (13-6) on Friday and Stony Brook (6-5) on Sunday. This will be the team’s only AE matches of the season.
UMBC ended the Bearcats’ run with a 4-2 victory in the semi-finals in the AE championships last season, which snapped their chances of getting a fifth consecutive appearance in the finals. The Retrievers, who were the reigning conference champions, also defeated the Bearcats earlier in the season 6-1.
UMBC is led by junior Nick Savage-Pollock and senior David Jackson. Pollock was 4-0 in last season’s tournament and one of his wins included a victory over current Binghamton senior Jon Bonnet. Jackson was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player in large part due to his impressive play against the Bearcats.
Senior Alex Dobrin is the only Bearcat that was able to steal a point away from the Retrievers last season as he went 3-0 combined between singles and doubles.
Prior to UMBC’s 2007 run, Binghamton and Stony Brook had appeared in four consecutive finals against each other in which the Bearcats won the first three championships before the Seawolves upset them in 2006.
SBU is riding a modest two-match win streak and is led by junior Youssef Fassi-Fehri who is the only player on the team to earn a point against UMBC in last season’s championship match.
The biggest x-factor going into this weekend may be the fact that Binghamton is loaded with new players. The Bearcats feature four freshman and three transfers. Among these players is freshman Arnav Jain who is 13-2 in duals and who is currently on a six-match win streak. Another player making his debut in the AE games is junior Sebastian Dietz, one of the year’s most highly coveted recruits. Finally, there is freshman Sven Vloedgraven who is the defending America East Player of the Week after going undefeated in last week’s games against Quinnipiac and Fairleigh Dickinson.
Despite all the new faces, the Bearcats are also loaded with grizzled veterans who have been through the conference trench wars before. Arguably the biggest one of them all is senior captain Faisal Mohamed, who has been playing at an elite level for four seasons. Mohamed is expected to be featured prominently this weekend at his usual spot, the top singles flight. Dobrin will likely appear in the bottom half of the lineup and Bonnet likely will be involved in a doubles match. Sophomore Moshe Levy, who has battled various injuries throughout his young collegiate career, is expected to be playing in the top half of the lineup.
Binghamton head coach Adam Cohen, acknowledged that these upcoming matches were not only important but will be tough to win.
“They’re both quality teams with good players, good coaches,” Cohen said. Hopefully the weather cooperates because I look forward to the challenge.”
Friday’s match is scheduled for a 2 p.m. start, with Sunday’s beginning at 10 a.m.