PASADENA, Calif. – The Caltech men's tennis team punched its ticket to the 2023 Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) Championship with a down-to-the-wire 5-4 triumph over the University of Redlands Friday evening.
While both teams finished with 5-2 conference records, Caltech owned the tiebreaker by virtue of a
5-4 regular season win over the Redlands Bulldogs, entitling the Beavers to host a semifinal as the No. 2 seed. Earlier in the evening, top-seeded Claremont-Mudd-Scripps defeated No. 4 seed Pomona-Pitzer and will host the conference championship tomorrow beginning at 4 p.m.
The contest began with the three doubles matchups and Caltech struck first as seniors
Rishi Gundakaram and
Nathan Zou defeated their opponents, 8-5, on Court 3. Junior
Ishaan Kannan and first-year
Andrew Zabelo represented the Beavers on Court 1, facing the top Redlands duo of Nils Plutat and Bryce Keim — the No. 1 doubles pairing in the
Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) West Region. While the Beaver duo combined to win four games, the Bulldogs took the set 8-4, leaving Court 2 to break the tie.
All eyes then turned to Court 2, where juniors Daniel Wen and Kyle McCandless were in the midst of a heated back-and-forth battle. Down 6-7 after neither team could attain a two-game lead, the duo won a critical game to tie the match at 7-7. There, Wen and McCandless posted a dominant performance, defeating the opposing Bulldogs 7-3 in the extra frame and putting Caltech ahead 2-1 overall.
After a short break, the two teams' seasons rested on the six singles matches, including two closely-matched pairings on the high courts as McCandless, ranked 12th in the region for singles, faced No. 11 Plutat in first singles. Kannan, 23rd in ITA west, faced No. 22 Hester in the second position.
A late change sent Redlands' seventh singles player up to the sixth position, and Gundakaram was first to finish with matching 6-1 set scores, but Redlands evened up the overall score at 3-3 with hard-fought wins in #1 and #3 Singles.
The remaining three matches all saw the players split the first and second sets, requiring decisive third sets to settle. Caltech pulled within one point of victory as Kannan rallied from a rough second set to prevail 6-4, 1-6, 6-4. Shortly thereafter, Redlands claimed their fourth match point with a win in fifth singles, and the match was all tied up again.
Echoing the doubles session, Daniel Wen played to a tiebreak for the third time of the day after winning his first set 6-3 and falling just short with a 7-5 breaker in the second set. With the deciding set tied at 6-6, Wen surged ahead 5-1 before the changeover. After conceding one last point, and nearly four full hours after the first serves of the day, Wen watched as his opponent's lob shot floated over the net and landed just wide of the singles line. He collapsed to the ground under the weight of the historic victory as his teammates stormed the court and the largest tennis crowd of the season exploded in cheers.
"It was an amazing effort today from the men," Head Coach Matt Brisotti said. "We Knew we were going to have to keep digging deep and that's exactly what we did. Ishaan played a great match to give us our fourth point, winning in three gritty sets. And credit to Dan [Wen] who found a way to clinch after having to serve to stay in the match at 5-6 to bring it to a tiebreaker."
"The crowd was awesome and electric, which is what you want for a home postseason competition," he added. "Thank you to all who attended!"
Tickets for Saturday's championship are available via Ticketleap.
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