Case Western Reserve University senior James Hopper and junior Vishwa Aduru will play for the NCAA Division III Doubles Championship on Sunday after claiming a win in their semifinal match on Saturday at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida.
Hopper and Aduru, the top-seeded pairing in the draw, bested Thomas Yu and James Yu of Johns Hopkins University in straight sets, 6-1, 6-0 to reach Sunday's NCAA Championship match.
Hopper will be making his second-straight appearance in the National Championship match after winning the doubles title with former Spartan Jonathan Powell last year. This will be the first NCAA Doubles Championship appearance for Aduru.
The duo will be aiming to win the third NCAA individual title in the history of the CWRU men's tennis program, joining Hopper and Powell last year and former Spartans CJ Krimbill and Eric Klawitter in 2014.
Sunday's doubles championship was nearly an all-Spartan affair, as seniors Diego Maza and Chris Provenzano fell just short of winning their semifinal match and filling the other spot in the title match.
Maza and Provenzano took the first set from Swarthmore's Michael Melnikov and Utham Koduri 6-4, before dropping the second set 6-4 to even the match. Each team held serve through the first seven games of the third and deciding set until Maza and Provenzano were able to break serve and take a 5-3 lead. The Swarthmore answered with wins in back-to-back games to tie the score at 5-5. The Spartans won a deciding point in the 11th game to take a 6-5 lead before Swarthmore won the 12th game to send the match to a tiebreaker. Maza and Provenzano fell behind 6-1 in the tiebreaker but rallied to pull back to within a point, 6-5. The Spartans appeared to have won the next point to even the score but were penalized for a hindrance due to an extended grunt, resulting in the match-clinching point for Swarthmore.
Also on Saturday, Aduru, seeded eighth, saw his run in the singles tournament come to an end with a 6-4, 7-6 (4) setback to Matthew Kandel of Williams in the semifinals.
Hopper and Aduru will take on unseeded Melnikov and Koduri at noon on Sunday. Fans can follow Sunday's championship match with live results at https://ioncourt.com/tournaments/64661c56c6e04603182da654/live-score and video on the NCAA Championship website at https://www.ustanationalcampus.com/en/home/collegiate/ncaa-championships.html.
