No. 39 Middle Tennessee men’s tennis (11-3) took down No. 19 Princeton (12-4), 7-0 on Friday night, picking up a Top 25 win with outstanding performances from Karim Al-Amin, Birtan Duran and Eric Crivei.
The Blue Raiders picked up their 10th consecutive win at home this season, in front of an electric crowd at the Adams Tennis Complex.
“It doesn’t matter if we’re playing a Top 20 team or a Top 100 team, we will always have great fans, great involvement, it’s amazing,” Al-Amin said.
The Blue Raiders got off to a hot start in doubles, as duo Crivei and Jonasz Dziopak defeated Princeton’s Meecah Bigun and Fnu Nidunjianzan 6-2, and Houston Jacques and Antoine Mayoral defeated Princeton’s Aleksandar Mitric and Sebastian Sec 6-3, to secure the doubles point for Middle Tennessee.
Princeton made three lineup changes going into singles including the removal of ITA ranked No. 4 Paul Inchauspe.
The momentum carried onto singles play, as Al-Amin defeated Princeton’s Landon Ardilla 6-1, 6-1 to secure the first singles point for MTSU and his fifth consecutive singles win.
“The energy really helped, carrying it from doubles into singles, that really gave me the edge on the start,.” Al-Amin said.
Crivei became the next Blue Raider to secure a singles point, as he defeated Bigun 6-3, 6-4.
Seconds later Duran secured the third singles point for the Blue Raiders, defeating Sec 6-3, 6-2, picking up his fourth consecutive singles win.
Ondrej Horak continued the team’s momentum on court one, defeating Nidunjianzan 6-2, 7-5 to secure the fourth singles point for the Blue Raiders.
Senior Freddy Murray went to the wire with Princeton’s Evan Wen, taking the first set 6-4, dropping the second set 7-6, before taking the third set tiebreaker 10-2 to secure the fifth singles point for the Blue Raiders.
The final match of the night belonged to Dziopak and Princeton’s Jordan Reznik, seeing Dziopak secure the last singles point 7-5, 7-6.
The Blue Raiders avenged last season’s 4-0 loss to Princeton, which is nearly one year to the date of the 7-0 win.
“Yeah, it feels great, we were all super pumped to play them in our house, especially since we lost to them last year at their place, everybody wanted it more than the other guys,.” Al-Amin said
The Blue Raiders (11-3) host Alabama State University and Austin Peay State University on Sunday, with the first game set for 12:00 p.m. CDT, and the latter game set for 5:00 p.m. CDT.
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