Michigan Outlasts Tough Crimson

It wasn’t a win, but at least it wasn’t Wednesday’s performance. Unlike the embarrassingly lackluster performance of its disappointing 5-2 loss to Eastern Tennessee State on Wednesday, the No. 48 Harvard men’s tennis team put up an admirable fight against the No. 8 Michigan, but eventually fell short, losing 5-2 last Friday at the Murr Center in a match that featured intense battles up and down the lineup.

With the loss, the Crimson drops to 4-4 this season, but, on balance, there’s a lot of good to be found in a hard-fought battle against a Big Ten Wolverine squad that is loaded with talent from top to bottom.

“You have to play at this kind of level over and over again before you’re ready to break through,” said assistant coach Andrew Rueb ’95.

It seemed for a moment, though, that Harvard would break through in the match itself. Down 1-3 overall, three Crimson players—co-captain Dan Nguyen at No. 4, freshman Aba Omodele-Lucien at No. 5, and senior Ashwin Kumar at No.1—appeared to have the momentum they would need to earn match-winning singles victories.

But when co-captain Dan Nguyen, playing at No. 4, got broken in the third set, Harvard abruptly found its back against the wall. Though Nguyen managed to save the first match point at 3-5 with a down-the line laser followed by an ace, he lost it (6-4) on his opponent’s next service game.

At first it didn’t look like Nguyen would even reach the third set. Strong serves off his opponent’s racket combined with an inconsistent start on Nguyen’s part to land him a 6-0 loss in the first set.

“The team’s been on my case the last few matches for holding back, for not playing my gamestyle, for not playing aggressively,” Nguyen said.

In the second set, Nguyen took his teammates’ advice to heart, playing fluidly and aggressively.

“I was finally able to let go in the second set,” Nguyen said. “I could swing hard without having to worry about hitting the ball 10 feet out.”

He rolled to a 6-2 second-set victory by angling groundstroke after groundstroke out of his opponent’s reach and hammering home a fair share of aces.

Though the Crimson’s loss had been sealed, Kumar’s match at No. 1 continued in fine—often dramatic—form.

Kumar and his opponent, Matko Maravic, looked to be at each other’s throats—even from across the court—after a series of disputed calls early in the first set. A heatedly contested call cost Kumar the first set tiebreaker, but energized him to turn the heat up on Maravic, which he did with his soft touch at the net.

“Ashwin’s so good at keeping pressure on his opponents because he keeps coming forward,” Rueb said.

Harvard’s other win came at No. 2, where junior co-captain Chris Clayton stood up to the bullet-like serves of his hulking opponent, 6’6” Mike Sroczynski, winning in two sets, 7-5, 6-4. Clayton put Sroczynski’s 120 mile per hour bullets to the corners of the service box back into play, and used his quickness to put himself on equal strategic footing.

He also took advantage of his opponent’s relatively limited agility to rack up quick points using his increasingly dangerous arsenal of groundstrokes.

“You’ve just got to wait for your opportunities,” Clayton said of his service return strategy. “Sooner or later, he’s going to give you some second serves, and that’s when you’ve got to capitalize.”

For Omodele-Lucien at No. 5, his three set loss was a story of a few too many missed opportunities. Omodele-Lucien won his first set and was handed a number of opportunities to take the second—on repeated double faults by his opponent—but eventually lost, 3-6, 7-5, 6-2.

“Aba comes out like a storm, just rolls people in the first set,” Rueb said. “He’s obviously fluid and very talented, but he needs to be able to put that high level of play together for two or three sets, and that takes time.”

Harvard’s other losses came at No. 3, where junior Sasha Ermakov lost, 6-2, 6-4 to Big Ten singles champion Jason Jung, and at No. 6 where freshman Alexei Chijoff-Evans lost, 6-3, 6-3.

In doubles, Ermakov and Kumar at No.1, Nguyen and sophomore Michael Hayes at No. 2, and Chijoff-Evans and Omodele-Lucien at No.3 all lost by an 8-5 score.

Harvard returns to action today at Clemson.

—Staff writer Jonathan B. Steinman can be reached at steinman@fas.harvard.edu.