A pair of dominating victories over America East foes Hartford and Boston University last weekend guaranteed the Binghamton University men’s tennis team that it wouldn’t end up like the New England Patriots: winless in February.
The Bearcats (3-6) posted a shutout against both conference rivals Friday night in two matches hosted by Hartford before falling to a skilled Harvard team 5-2 Saturday afternoon in Cambridge, Mass.
The Bearcats first grounded the Hawks in a lopsided 7-0 contest in which Binghamton won every set. Freshman Andreas Danielsson, junior Gregoire Berner and senior Jon Bonnet failed to even lose a game in singles play. No. 1 singles was the only matchup that was remotely close, as it was tied 5-5 in the first set when Hartford senior Artur Muller retired with an injury, giving Binghamton freshman Sven Vloedgraven the victory.
After clipping the wings of the Hawks, the Bearcats proceeded to take a bite out of the Boston University Terriers, defeating them 6-0. Berner, playing out of fifth singles, made his day truly perfect with another sweep. Sophomore Moshe Levy, who has battled various injuries throughout his career and has played sparingly this season, earned a 6-4, 6-1 victory at first singles. Danielsson, playing his second consecutive match out of third singles, was the only Bearcat to lose a set all day. After winning the first set against sophomore Jeff Chudacoff 6-4, he dropped the second set 5-7 before winning the super tiebreaker third set 10-8.
Due to time constraints, doubles matches were not played in this contest. Binghamton head coach Adam Cohen was impressed with his team’s singles play.
“We should beat those teams and we should beat them easily,” Cohen said. “We took care of business the way we’re supposed to.”
Binghamton’s only two points at Harvard Saturday came from Berner at fifth singles and freshman Arnav Jain at sixth singles. Jain’s victory was especially impressive as he battled back to win a tiebreaker with Crimson freshman Will Guzick, a player Cohen described as a “blue chip recruit,” after losing the first set 6-1 and trailing late in the second set.
Jain and Berner, the two newest additions to Cohen’s squad, have been mightily impressive in their short stint as Bearcats. Jain is 5-1 as a singles player this season, playing as high as fourth singles at times. Berner also has five singles wins under his belt this season after his 3-0 weekend.
The pair have strengthened the bottom of Cohen’s singles lineup, which is the main reason the Bearcats have been able to hang in tough against strong opposition — despite injuries to key players such as senior captain Faisal Mohamed and star junior Sebastian Dietz. Fourth through sixth singles for Binghamton are 17-10 overall , while the top three singles spots are a combined 12-15.
Despite the Bearcats’ mediocre record, Cohen said he’s satisfied with his team, particularly the bottom half of singles.
“We’re getting pretty solid results at the bottom,” Cohen said “I think that our team is gonna keep getting better [but] we need to get the guys who play at the top healthy and back in the lineup.”
Binghamton is scheduled to take on host St. John’s at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Long Beach Tennis Center.