Princeton drops two Ivy League matches at home

After an intense road trip over intersession, men's tennis was poised to charge full strength into its Ivy League season. The Tigers' Ivy League record (5-11 overall), however, fell to 0-3 with back-to-back indoor losses to No. 70 Brown (14-9, 1-1) Friday and No. 73 Yale (8-7, 1-1) Saturday at Jadwin Gym.

Brown and Yale are middle-of-the-road teams in the Ivy League, tied for fourth. The two league losses put Princeton at the bottom of the standings, tied for last with winless Harvard and Dartmouth. Though both losses came by the score of 5-2, the matchups were closer than the scores reflect.

The Tigers' two wins over Brown came in singles play. Senior No. 2 Darius Craton earned a straight-set win over Basu Ratnam. Senior No. 4 Hans Plukas eked out a win in a third-set, neck-and-neck super tiebreaker, 10-8, although the win was of no consequence to the match, since the Bears had already earned the four victories required to clinch a notch in the win column at that point. One of Princeton's four singles losses came off the racquet of No. 63 Dan Hanegby, who handed Princeton's top-seeded junior Sratha Saengsuwarn a defeat in straight sets.

Princeton nearly beat Brown with its doubles play with the top team of junior Ted Mabrey and senior Andrew Lieu and the No. 3 team of seniors Craton and Shannon Morales both pulling out to three-game leads early on in their matchups before falling 9-7 and 8-6, respectively. The No. 2 pairing of Plukas and freshman Alex Krueger-Wyman also battled valiantly, losing 9-7.

Rain also pushed Saturday's match indoors, and the Tigers fell in a series of tight match-ups, except in singles rather than doubles play this time around.

Freshman Alex Vuckovic rallied after losing 6-4, 6-4 in his match-up on Friday at No. 5 singles. Saturday, he faced a tough path to victory in a nailbiting three-set contest. Vuckovic's opponent, Rory Green, spoke with his coach and picked up his game substantially in the second to quickly grab the set, 6-1, after Vuckovic handily won the first set 6-3.

"At that point Yale was up 3-1... we had three matches going on, and they were all in the third set," Vuckovic said. "I raised my intensity."

With an invigorated attitude, Vuckovic was able to rein in control of the match and win in the third set, 7-5.

Lieu nearly earned Princeton another three-set victory at No. 3 singles in a back-and-forth 6-3, 5-7, 7-5 loss to Yale's Jeff Dawson. Morales, who did not play singles on Friday, stepped in at the No. 6 position for the Tigers on Saturday and fell in three sets.

This go-round, No. 1 Saengsuwarn again lost to Brandon Wai, 6-3, 6-0, who Vuckovic notes "is arguably the best player in the Ivies right now" while Craton again triumphed in straight sets.

Princeton sent out the same three pairings to duel for No. 1, 2 and 3 doubles as the day before. All three fell, with Plukas and Krueger-Wyman pushing their match the closest to victory, 8-6.

Despite the two losses, head coach Glenn Michibata "was happy with the effort we gave," Vuckovic said. "He's still optimistic. If we won the rest of our four matches, we could still be in the hunt to win the Ivies."

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The Tigers will look to end their three-game league slide next weekend when Princeton squares off against the two other teams sitting in the dregs right now — Dartmouth and Harvard — on their home courts on Friday and Saturday.