WALTHAM, Mass. (May 4, 2021) -- Looking to stay sharp in case it is selected to the NCAA Championship, the Franklin Pierce University men's tennis team took to the road to take on Brandeis in a non-conference contest on Tuesday afternoon. The Ravens suffered a 7-2 defeat at the hands of the Judges.

With the loss, Franklin Pierce falls to 7-3, while Brandeis improves to 6-1.

With Brandeis as the home team, the two teams played under Division III scoring rules, where each doubles match counts as a single point. Franklin Pierce took two of the three doubles contests to open up a 2-1 lead.

Brandeis jumped out front initially, with an 8-3 win at first doubles, where senior Anupreeth Coramutla and junior Colt Tegtmeier bettered graduate student Felipe Carvalho (Sao Paulo, Brazil) and sophomore Alejandro Ortiz (Madrid, Spain).

Franklin Pierce answered with wins at third and second doubles, in that order, to edge out in front, 2-1. At third doubles, freshman Ivan Bernal (Madrid, Spain) and graduate student Kevin Denecheau (Artigueloutan, France) needed a tiebreak, but eventually pulled out an 8-7 (6) win over junior Jeffrey Chen and freshman Dylan Walters. At second doubles, it was an 8-6 win for senior Yuval Barak (Zicron Ya'akov, Israel) and Nkrumah Patrick (Tunapuna, Trinidad and Tobago) over senior Rajan Vohra and sophomore Simon Kauppila.

Brandeis reclaimed the lead at 3-2 with a pair of early singles wins. At second singles, Chen slipped past Denecheau in straight sets, 6-4, 7-5. Third singles went in straight sets as well, as Walters edged Bernal, 7-6 (2), 6-4. The Judges extended the lead to 4-2 when Coramutla was able to grind out a three-set win at first singles over Carvalho, 7-5, 3-6, 6-3.

Brandeis clinched the team victory with a straight-set win at fourth singles to push the lead out to an insurmountable, 5-2 advantage. Tegtmeier sealed the deal with a 6-2, 6-3 win over sophomore Joel Cladera (Palma de Mallorca, Spain).

The two teams still played things out at fifth and sixth singles, and Brandeis took both, which created the 7-2 final. At fifth singles, Barak and senior Nikhil Das split the first two sets and played a 10-point tiebreak in lieu of a full third set. Das prevailed with a 6-2, 3-6, 10-8 victory. At sixth singles, senior Ben Maffa took a 6-2, 6-0 victory from Patrick.