Princeton sweeps Williams, Brown at home

With five matches and five wins secured by the men's squash team so far this season, the ease with which the Tigers have attacked their opponents leaves no doubt that they are ready for a title run at next week's Five-Man national tournament. Princeton (5-0 overall, 2-0 Ivy League) cruised to victories over Williams and Brown (0-3, 0-3) at Jadwin Gym this weekend without dropping a single game in the process.

"I was personally happy with my individual performance as well as with the team's," said senior No. 1 Yasser El Halaby. "We got the job done with clean sweeps on both days."

On Friday, the Tigers easily took out Williams, 9-0. It was the first match this season in which Princeton had all of its top five seeds in the lineup since injuries had taken some of the players out from the Yale Scrimmage and the tournament at Cornell. El Halaby had most recently sat out Wednesday's match against Franklin and Marshall as some of the players who have not seen much court time to rotate in. This year's injuries and absences, however, do not compare with the problems and bad luck that devastated last year's roster in the fall.

The top five and the bottom half of the ladder were able to make quick work of Williams. El Halaby dropped only three points his entire match. Freshman No. 2 Mauricio Sanchez easily claimed his match, giving up only two points in the process. On the bottom half of the ladder, sophomore No. 9 Tom McKay and junior No. 10 Parker Sutton had strong scores of 9-4, 9-1, 9-4 and 9-1, 9-0, 9-2, respectively. After this match, the Tigers were 4-0 and on the prowl for a second Ivy League win against Brown.

Brown can't deliver

On Saturday, Princeton proved once again that Jadwin is its home turf, taking out the Bears in convincing fashion. Sanchez, junior Vincent Yu, senior Nate Beck and McKay all won their matches against Brown without losing a single point. Freshman No. 3 Kimlee Wong and junior No. 5 Michael Gilman each only lost one point in their straight-game matches.

Freshman No. 4 Hesham had a climatic end to his Brown match. After taking the first two games easily, 9-3, 9-0, he was caught off guard by the aggressiveness of his Bear opponent in the third game. Ultimately, El Halaby prevailed with a dramatic 10-8 third game.

"We all need to play consistently in all of our matches, but I think that we are improving on that," Hesham El Halaby said. "Five-Man will be very competitive, and the best teams in the nation will be competing for that title. I think we have a solid chance of winning as long as we play consistently and remain focused on our goal."

The Five-Man tournament features some of nation's best professional, amateur and collegiate players from around the country. It will be one of the Tigers' first formidable challenges of the season and, while not critically decisive, can set the tone for the rest of the season as Princeton takes on the more difficult Ivy League teams.

"I have no expectations for the Five-Mans since I don't know who we will be competing against," Yasser said. "But we have two strong teams representing Princeton, and hopefully one of the teams will be able to contend for the title."

The three-day tournament will be hosted by Yale next weekend. Though the bracket is still up in the air since it is not yet clear what professionals and amateur teams will be competing, it will provide the Tigers with a way to measure their ability to contend with college powerhouses Yale, Harvard and Trinity.