The Case Western Reserve University men's tennis team, ranked fourth in Division III, bounced back from its first two losses of the campaign on Friday with a pair of wins on Saturday, defeating Hope College 6-1 and 20th-ranked Carnegie Mellon University 5-2 at the Mayfield Village Racquet Club in Mayfield, Ohio.

The Spartans improved to 6-2 on the season with the two wins, including a perfect 6-0 mark against Division III opponents.

CWRU swept all three doubles matches against Hope to collect the doubles point in the match. At no. 1 doubles, junior Anmay Devaraj and senior Casey Hishinuma defeated Rylan Doden and Paul Schneider 6-1 and sophomores Derek Shiffer and Santiago Salazar Garza bested Austin Becksvoort and Elliot Dozeman 6-1 in the third match to clinch the doubles point. Completing the sweep, sophomores Trey Lambright and George Kosseifi picked up a 6-2 win at second doubles over Alec Maynard and Ned Curley.

First-year Jon Totorica notched the first singles point for the Spartans with a 6-1, 6-1 win against Schneider in the third singles match and first-year Konrad Kwiatkowski made it a 3-0 CWRU lead with a 6-2, 6-2 victory at fourth singles over Doden. First-year Leon Chen provided the clincher for the Spartans with a win at sixth singles, defeating Maynard 6-3, 6-4.

Once the match was decided, Hope picked up its first and only point of the match at fifth singles where first-year Luke Saylor fell to Becksvoort 6-4, 6-4. However, CWRU won each of the final two matches, with senior Ajay Mahenthiran claiming a 6-2, 6-4 win over Cooper Nugent at no. 1 singles and first-year Rowan Matorin securing a 7-5, 6-2 win over Curley in the second singles match.

Hope fell to 0-4 following the loss on Saturday.

CWRU came away with the doubles point again to open its match against Carnegie Mellon later in the day. The Spartans claimed wins in the first two matches to be decided with Devaraj and Hishinuma beating Akshay Joshi and Alex Feies 6-1 at no. 1 doubles and Kosseifi and Lambright winning 6-4 at third doubles over Raghav Jangbahdur and Takeshi Koey. In the second doubles match, the Tartans duo of Theodore Gershon and Brendan Hendrata won 7-6 (3) over CWRU's Salazar Garcia and Shiffer.

Each Spartan won the first set of his singles match, and Salazar Garza was the first to clinch a win, putting CWRU in front 2-0 with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Will Secord in the sixth singles match. Hishinuma followed with a 6-3, 6-1 win against Joshi at fifth singles and junior Matthew Plunkett clinched the win for CWRU with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Daniel Kong at fourth singles.

After the team win was clinched, Mahenthiran, ranked 34th in DIII, added a 6-3, 7-5 win against Feies, the fourth-ranked singles player in Division III, in the first singles match. The other two matches each went to a third set with the Tartans winning each, as Kosseifi fell 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 to 21st-ranked Jangbahadur in the second singles match and Devaraj dropped a 2-6, 6-4, 10-5 decision at third singles to Hendrata.

Carnegie Mellon dropped to 3-1 with the loss.

The Spartans will now turn their attention to the 2025 ITA Indoor Team Championship in St. Peter, Minnesota next weekend, which will feature some of the top competition in Division III. CWRU, the third-seeded team at the event, will open play at 10:00 a.m. ET against ninth-ranked and sixth-seeded Swarthmore College on Friday, February 21. More information on the event can be found on the tournament website.

Spartan Notes

• Saturday's win over Carnegie Mellon was the team's first against a ranked opponent this season. CWRU is now 2-0 this season against UAA teams, including a win at Rochester last weekend.

• CWRU finished the day with a 5-1 doubles record and a 9-3 singles mark as a team. The Spartans now stand at 125-56 (.691) in singles matches and 51-30 (.630) in doubles matches this year, including a 27-9 (.750) singles record and a 15-3 (.833) doubles record in dual matches. 

• The Spartans have now swept the three doubles matches in five of their eight matches this season and have claimed the doubles point seven times.