SOMERVILLE - The third-ranked Tufts University men's tennis team finished its regular-season with an impressive 8-1 victory against 18th-ranked Amherst College on Sunday at South Courts. Head coach Karl Gregor's Jumbos are 15-1 and enter the post-season on a 14-match winning streak.
The Jumbos swept doubles this morning, starting with an 8-2 win by today's middle pair Paris Pentousis and Isaac Gorelik. They were two of six seniors playing in their final regular-season match on campus. Josh Belandres and Rishabh Sharda followed with an 8-4 win in the #1 match against Amherst's Sujit Chepuri and Damien Ruparel. It was a meeting of the #5 in the region Jumbo duo against the #4 Amherst pair. Tufts' third tandem of Niko Hereford and Derin Acaroglu went to a tie-breaker to secure the doubles sweep 8-7 (6).
Acaroglu then blew through a 6-0, 6-0 win against Chepuri in the #4 match. Sharda then took the second singles match 6-1, 6-0, which put Tufts ahead 5-0 and clinched the victory.
The lone Amherst victory on the day came in fifth singles where Kobe Ellenborgen won 6-2, 6-2 games over Belandres. Otherwise, the Jumbos closed out the win with wins by Gorelik over Ruparel (#4 vs. #7 in the region, respectively) by 6-3, 6-2 scores, freshman Vuk Vuksanovic going three sets to win his #3 match for Tufts and Jack Moldenhauer earning a 6-2, 6-3 win on the sixth singles court.
Both teams will now wait for the seedings to be released for next weekend's (May 6-8) conference championship. The top eight teams in the conference standings qualify for the championship and will play single elimination matches with no consolation matches.
