WILLIAMSTOWN, MA – The Williams College men's tennis team improved to 10-9 on the year and 4-4 in NESCAC play with a 7-2 win over visiting Bates (9-8/4-4 NESCAC).
The loss by Bates was their fourth in a row after they had won the first four matches of their last eight. Williams bounced back into the win column after falling yesterday to Bowdon at home, 6-3.
The Ephs have now defeated Bates all 12 times they have played going back to the first match in the 2000 NCAA Tournament.
Bates won at first doubles convincingly with Pierre Planche and Christopher Ellis downing Jordan Sadowsky and Alex Schidlovsky, 8-1.
Williams, however, won at two and three doubles to take a 2-1 lead into singles play.
The #2 Eph tandem of Jose Raventos and Rohan Shastri defeated the Bobcats' pairing of Henry Lee and Ben Rosen, 8-4. Third doubles was the closest doubles encounter with the Eph duo of Sachi Raghavan and Brian Gordecki topping Patrick Ordway and Brent Feldman, 8-6.
Williams then reeled off wins at 1-5 singles to capture the match.
Bates' lone singles win came at number six where Patrick Ordway won in a tiebreaker 6-3, 1-6 (10-5) over Howard Weiss.
Jose Raventos downed Pierre Planche in straight sets, 6-0, 6-0 at one singles, while Rohan Shastri downed Christopher Ellis at two singles 6-3, 7-6 (1).
Three singles went to Williams with Alex Schidlovsky defeating Adam Schwartz in straight sets 6-0, 6-3 and Brian Gordecki claimed four singles in straight sets by topping Brent Feldman 6-3, 6-0.
Sachi Raghavan at five singles went to a tiebreaker to gain his victory over Ben Rosen. Raghavan took the first set 6-2, lost the second 6-7 (4), and then won the tiebreaker (10-5).
"Today was a hugely important match for us, and I'm thrilled with how we responded," said Eph head coach Dan Greenberg. "We played much tougher than we have all year and showed we could be a pretty good team when we don't give away free points, games, and sets."
Both Bates and Williams will now await the announcement of the NESCAC Tournament seeds for the NESCAC Championship Tournament that will be hosted by Middlebury College next Friday through Sunday. Tournament seeds are expected out early this week.
The six-team NESCAC Tournament opens Friday May 1 at Middlebury College with the five seed playing the four seed and the sixth seed playing the third seed. The winners of Friday's matches will advance to play the top seeded teams on Saturday.
The winner of the 4/5 match will play the #1 seed and the winner of the 3/6 match draws the #2 seed.
