Marquette men’s tennis (1-11, 0-3 Big East) fought hard against North Dakota (8-3), but ultimately dropped two matches against the Fighting Hawks this past weekend.
Initially, Marquette and North Dakota were supposed to play Dayton in their second matches of the weekend, but illness within the Dayton men’s tennis program forced the Flyers to cancel their trip to Milwaukee. In light of that, Marquette and North Dakota played each other a second time on Saturday instead.
In the first match with North Dakota on Feb. 21, the doubles point eluded Marquette once again, with the Fighting Hawks jumping out to a 1-0 early advantage. First-year TJ Ryerson tied the match at 1-1 by winning 6-4, 6-2 at the No. 4 singles position, and notching his fifth singles win of the season.
The Golden Eagles then fell behind 3-1 by dropping the No. 1 and No. 3 singles matches. A stark difference in the two lineups was that in the singles matches, Marquette started five first-years (at No. 2 through No. 6), while North Dakota only played one (at No. 3).
First-year Cyrus Ahmad gave Marquette some much needed momentum in the No. 2 singles match, keeping the Golden Eagles afloat by gritting out the second set 7-6, which came by Ahmad winning three consecutive points to take the set tiebreaker 8-6. He then took the third set 6-4, making it 3-2 North Dakota. First-year Evan Glebov, filling in for Hugh Perrill at the No. 6 singles spot, won a close two-set match 7-6, 7-5, and came out on the right side of an 8-6 set tiebreaker to propel Marquette to tie the match 3-3.
Remi St. Laurent fell short in three sets at the No. 5 singles match, 6-7, 6-1 and 3-6, as North Dakota grabbed the team win on Friday evening.
In Saturday’s rematch against the Fighting Hawks, the Golden Eagles obtained their first doubles point of the season with Blake Roegner/Cyrus Ahmad taking the No. 1 doubles set 6-1, and Kristian Blagoev/Ivan Vazquez emerging with the No. 2 doubles set 7-6, to give Marquette the 1-0 advantage. Roegner won his match at No. 1 singles in straight 6-2 sets, but the Golden Eagles could not capitalize off the early momentum.
Marquette then dropped the No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 and No. 6 singles contests for North Dakota to secure the fourth team point, and both weekend matches. Blagoev stepped up at No. 2 singles with Ahmad out of the singles lineup, but lost a close two-set match, 5-7, 4-6, as the Fighting Hawks flipped their No. 1 and No. 2 singles players from Friday’s matchup.
Up next for Marquette are a couple of Big Ten programs, and first up is rival Wisconsin (5-2) on Feb. 27. The first serve is set for 5:30 p.m. CST at the Sprovieri Tennis Complex. After that, Marquette embarks on its fourth road matchup against an Illinois-based team to face Northwestern (5-7) on Mar. 1, rounding out the week’s action.
This article was written by Mikey Severson. He can be reached at michael.severson@marquette.edu or on Twitter/X @MikeySeversonMU.
