Case Western Reserve University sophomore James Hopper won both of his matches on Friday afternoon to advance to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Division III Championships singles draw, while Hopper and senior Matthew Chen reached the quarterfinals of the doubles draw with a win in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
In the opening match of the 32-player singles draw, Hopper, seeded second in the draw, claimed a 6-4, 6-2 win over Methodist University's Jordan Theron. He followed that with a 6-1, 6-4 win over Denison University's Tim Cianciola in the round of 16. The final game of Hopper's win against Ciancola was moved from the Champions Club indoors to the
Hopper improved to 14-1 overall on the season with the two singles wins.
Next up for Hopper will be a quarterfinal matchup against unseeded Arturo Kam of Williams College at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. Should he win, Hopper will advance to the semifinals at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday to take on the victor of the quarterfinal match between fourth-seeded Leo Vithoontien of Carleton College and seventh-seeded Hayden Cassone of Emory University. Matches on the other side of the quarterfinal draw include third-seeded Vishnu Joshi of Johns Hopkins University against fifth-seeded Boris Sorkin of Tufts University, and top-seeded Ethan Hillis of Washington University (Mo.) and Marcos Dias of Southern Virginia University. The championship match is scheduled for noon on Sunday.
In doubles play, it took three sets for Hopper and Chen to pick up the win over Moses Hutchison and Andrew Watson of the University of Mary Washington. The CWRU duo, seeded first overall in the draw, topped their opponents by a score of 6-2, 5-7, 6-3.
The pairing improved to 12-0 together this season, and to 36-2 with just one loss to a Division III opponent over the past two seasons.
Hopper and Chen, who are the only seeded doubles pair remaining in the draw after the first round of play, will face Brandeis' unseeded duo Jeffrey Chen and Adam Tzeng in the quarterfinals on Saturday, with the matches slated to begin no earlier than 4:30 p.m. Other quarterfinals doubles matches include Nick Aney and Alex Budde of Gustavus Adolphus against Marcos Dias and Daniel Blonquist of Southern Virginia, Will Leach and Luke Lemaitre of George Fox against Noah Lillenthal and Ben Mitchell of Wesleyan, and Hayden Cassone and Antonio Mora of Emory against Leo Vithoontien and Xander Zuczek of Carleton.
The doubles semifinals will be on Sunday, starting no earlier than 1:30 p.m., and will be followed by the championship match.
Live results for Saturday's matches will be available at http://scores.tennisticker.de/usa/sewanee/sb.html?tournid=4945, while live video can be viewed at https://www.ncaa.com/liveschedule.
