Win Streak Comes To a Halt as Brown Stops Men's Tennis

The Harvard men’s tennis team, which had won 12 straight matches, was rolling to its second consecutive Ivy League title, dominating every opponent it faced. On Thursday, its momentum ground to a screeching halt after a 4-3 loss to Brown (14-9, 3-3 Ivy) at the Murr Center.

The No. 21 Crimson (17-5, 5-1) could not deliver in its final home match of the season, ending its hopes of its first perfect Ivy League season since 2008 and its desire to send out co-captain Andy Nguyen with a win in his final home contest.

Harvard, which has already clinched at least a share of the Ancient Eight title, can still earn an outright victory with a win at Dartmouth on Saturday, but that does not make this loss any easier to take.

“It’s a bitter pill to swallow,” head coach Dave Fish said. “Especially when you’ve had such a wonderful year, it’s tough. Tonight, we were human and weren’t firing on all six cylinders.”

The Bears came in with just a 2-3 conference record and sat at sixth place in the Ancient Eight but put up a strong fight against Harvard. Although the Crimson had defeated Brown in eight of their past nine meetings, the Bears ensured that mark would not extend to nine out of ten.

The match was supposed to be played last Friday before it was postponed due to the citywide manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers. And just as Harvard’s schedule was thrown off, so was its tennis game on Thursday night.

The first sign that the Crimson might be in for a long day came when Brown came out firing and challenged the team in an area in which it had been dominant: doubles play.

Harvard had won the crucial doubles point in each match during its 12-match winning streak, but the streak came to an end at the hands of the Bears, even though Brown had lost the doubles point in every one of its past four contests.

Although each match was tightly contested, the Crimson could not do enough to pull out a victory in two of the three matches.

At No. 2, Andy Nguyen and freshman Nicky Hu saved a match point at 6-7 before prevailing, 10-8. But the other two matches swung in the Bears’ favor. On the third court, sophomore Alex Steinroeder and freshman Kelvin Lam went down, 9-7, leaving the doubles point up to the first team of sophomore Denis Nguyen and junior co-captain Casey MacMaster.

The duo, ranked 71st in the country, came into the match boasting an 11-1 record in dual play, but found itself down 6-2 early. The pair came back to tie it at 6-6, but Brown’s Brandon Burke and William Spector outlasted Nguyen and MacMaster for a 13-11 win.

For the first time in 13 matches, Harvard found itself in a 1-0 hole and needing to win four out of the six singles matches in order to preserve its perfect Ivy League record.

“Losing the doubles point was really hard,” Fish said. “We’re not substantially better than people. We’re good enough to win the doubles point and then get three singles matches to pull out the win.”

On Thursday, the Crimson was not good enough to pull out the win. In singles, Steinroeder tied the match at 1-1 after cruising to a 6-1, 6-2 victory in the fourth slot, and Hu put Harvard ahead with a 6-4, 7-5 win at No. 5.

But the Bears quickly tied it back up, 2-2, when Lam fell at No. 6, 3-6, 4-6. Andy Nguyen fought hard on the third court but lost in a three-setter, 5-7, 7-5, 2-6, to lower his record on the season to 15-4 in dual play. The losses meant that the match would be decided on the final two courts.

On the first court, Denis Nguyen easily won the first set, 6-1, but found himself in a dogfight soon after. He served for the match in the second, but lost the tiebreaker, 9-7. He then was broken twice in the third set and lost, clinching the match for Brown. Sophomore Shaun Chaudhuri, who was leading in the third set, won by default for the final 4-3 margin.

Despite the tough loss, the team believes that the defeat will renew its focus for the matchup against the Big Green and the upcoming NCAA tournament.

“This is kind of a hidden gem for the team,” Hu said. “It’s easy to take matches like this for granted, but now this gives us motivation going forward. Tonight brought us back down to reality, but it will also fuel our fire.”

—Staff writer Justin C. Wong can be reached at justinwong@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @justincwong94.