Staten Island, NY | The College of Staten Island men’s tennis team stayed hot today, backing up a big win on teh road yesterday, with a win today to introduce CUNYAC play on their home courts, 5-4, over Hunter College. The Dolphins lifted their overall mark to 3-1 and their CUNYAC position to 1-0, while Hunter leveled to 3-3 overall and fell to 3-1 in the CUNYAC.
It was Doubles that seemed to fuel play in this one, as CSI got out to a huge, 3-0, edge after Doubles play before Hunter came storming back to make things interesting late. Up just 4-3 late in the match, CSI’s Alex Tsui clinched it with a win at No. 4 Singles, moments before Hunter was able to take the final result via a third-set tiebreaker.
Before all of the CSI looked very sharp to start the match in Doubles. Matthew Vesci and Tao Lin were especially efficient, getting up early and then holding on to score a couple of points late to take an 8-2 winner over the HC team of Ard Pula and Ryan Hwang, A few beats later, CSI was able to score a nice win in the top spot, as the team of Ivi Selenica and Tsui were able to get by Hunter one-two pair Nasser Ghaffar and Omer Khalifa, 8-4.
Things were different at No. 3, which took some time to settle. The Hunter tandem of Jose Agregado and Kyle Burrus looked very strong at first, going up, 4-1, over CSI’s Lesly DeCastro and Raymond Hwang. But slow but slow, DeCastro and Hwang started to build up some winners, and after finally breaking service late, they came all the way back to score an 8-5 win to give CSI the commanding, 3-0 edge.
The Dolphins then went up by an even sizable score when Hwang, playing at No. 3, quickly won his match over HC’s Pula, 6-0, 6-2, putting CSI one-win away from clinching. From there, however, the Hawks started to turn the tide. In the No. 6 spot, Ryan Hwang was able to weather the push from Tao Lin, 6-2, 6-1, to finally get Hunter on the board. Just a couple of minutes later, Khalifa at No. 2 scored a win over Vesci, 6-3, 6-3 to make it a 4-2 match.
After some back-and-forth play and a hard-fought second-set, Selenica for CSI ultimately would fall in the top spot to Ghaffar, 6-3, 6-4, and just like that, Hunter was back in it.
At the time it was 4-3, CSI’s Tsui had won his first set over Agregado, 6-4, but was locked in a battle in set number two. Tsui got off to a monster, 4-0, lead, but Agregado battled back to tie it at 4-4. Again Tsui went up, 5-4, but Agregado punched back and won the next two points to make it 6-5. In a big face-off, Tsui was able to then tie and force a seven-point tie-break. A couple of unforced errors and then a big ace helped Tsui to a 4-0 lead in the tie-break and that helped him secure a 6-4, 7-6 (7-2) winner to clinch the win for the Dolphins.
The final match to conclude was DeCastro’s, who was also locked in a huge match with HC’s Matthew Solovey. Solovey won the first match,, 6-4, but seconds after Tsui clinched the match, DeCastro tied things up with a 6-4 win in the second set. With a 10-point tie-breaker to determine the winner, Solovey dominated and got off to a 9-1 edge. DeCastro scored the next three points, but then Solovey knocked in a winner to win it, 10-4, and making the final score, 5-4.
Now on a three-game win streak, CSI will look to keep the streak moving. Their next match is on Tuesday when they travel to face Brooklyn College for a CUNYAC battle at 3:30pm.
