Middle Tennessee men’s tennis (21-8) won its CUSA tournament semifinal matchup against fifth-seed University of Delaware (14-9), 4-0.  

The Blue Raiders will compete for their seventh straight CUSA championship on Sunday against the winner of the Jacksonville State University and Liberty University. 

The Blue Raiders won the doubles point in a tightly contested battle across the three courts.  

Splitting the first two matches with MTSU’s Karim Al-Amin and Birtan Duran winning and teammates Eric Crivei and Jonasz Dziopak falling 6-4, the deciding match for the point ended in thrilling fashion.  

After falling behind 4-1 to Delaware’s pairing of Federico Garbrero and Itamar Tapiro, Blue Raiders Ondrej Horak and Antoine Mayoral battled back to win the match 7-6 after forcing a tie-breaking point to give the team a 1-0 lead. 

“They started kind of hot. We made a couple of mistakes in each game,” Horak said. “We were down 4-1 and I told Antoine we are right there. We broke their serve at 4-2 and got more comfortable and we battled back.” 

The Blue Raiders completed the sweep over Delaware winning three singles matches in straight sets.  

Al-Amin won his match over Euan Mackenzie winning 6-2, 6-2 with Horak also winning his match over Tobey Lock 6-3, 6-2. Sophomore Eric Crivei clinched the victory for MTSU winning against Blue Hens sophomore Itamar Tapiro 7-6, 6-2. 

A win on Sunday will give the Blue Raiders their ninth conference championship under head coach Jimmy Borendame, with MTSU also winning Sun Belt conference championships in 2011 and 2012.  

MTSU reached the second round of the NCAA tournament three consecutive seasons from 2022-2024, receiving the no. 16 overall seed during the 2022 season.  

Bordendame has been named CUSA coach of the year six times during his career at MTSU, producing six CUSA Player of the Year and four CUSA Freshman of the Year players.  

“I think reach seven straight conference championship games speaks a lot to the culture and program that coach Borendame has built here,” assistant coach Josh McDermott said. “He puts his blood, sweat and tears into this program and it shows in the results. We want to win the title every year.” 

The CUSA tournament championship game will begin at 11 A.M. at the MTSU outdoor tennis complex in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.