MIDDLEBURY — Visiting Wesleyan upset the then No. 1 Middlebury College men’s tennis team on Sunday, dealing the Panthers their first league loss. The score was 5-4.
The Panthers dropped to 16-2 and 6-1 in league play, while Wesleyan, ranked No. 8, improved to 11-2, 6-1 in NESCAC play.
The Panthers on Saturday had dismissed another NESCAC foe, Trinity, 9-0. The Panthers did not drop a set on Saturday. Middlebury, which had its eight-match winning streak snapped with Sunday’s setback, returns to action this Sunday, when the team closes out its regular season by visiting No. 13 Amherst.
The Cardinals on Sunday won two out of three doubles matches. The Cardinal No. 3 duo of Steven Chen and Cameron Daniels earned an 8-3 win over Middlebury’s Timo van der Geest and Peter Martin, and the No. 2 team of Eusebio and Maxwell Smith edged Panthers’ Hamid Derbani and Kyle Schlanger, 8-6. At No. 1, Middlebury’s Lubomir Cuba and William de Quant defeated Michael Liu and Jake Roberts, 9-7.
In singles, the Panthers knotted the match when de Quant won in the No. 2 spot, 6-4, 6-3 over Liu. The Cardinals took a 4-2 lead behind wins from Eusebio over Derbani in the third slot (6-2, 6-4) and Daniels over van der Geest (7-6 (4), 6-2) at No. 5.
Middlebury responded with wins at No. 1 by Cuba over Chen, 2-6, 6-4, 6-3, and by Schlanger over Joachim Samson at No. 4, 6-3, 2-6, 6-3.
The overall match was the last contested individual, at No. 6. Wesleyan’s Princeton Carter fought back from a set down for a 2-6, 7-6 (4), 6-2 victory over Allen Jackson, giving the visitors the 5-4 win.