ROME, Ga. -
Advik Mareedu of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men's tennis came out on fire, winning the first eight games, and took a 6-0, 6-3 win over Kael Shalin Shah of Denison in the ITA Cup quarterfinal round on Friday at the Rome Tennis Center.
Mareedu was up 6-0, 2-0 and 40-30 before finally yielding his first game after Shan earned two straight points. Mareedu is now two wins away from earning his second career ITA Cup singles title, after winning the tournament as a freshman in 2021-22. Shah was the runner-up in the NCAA Division III singles championship last spring.
The Stags also picked up a pair of wins in the consolation bracket of the doubles tournament , thanks to so some especially strong play in tiebreakers.
Warren Pham and
Matthew Robinson earned a win over the tournament's top seed, Aiden Drover-Mattinen and Andy Zhu of RPI, bouncing back after falling in the first set and dominating a pair of tiebreakers to earn a 2-6, 7-6 (7-1), 10-3 win. The Stags were down 3-0 in the second set, fought off a match point at deuce trailing 5-6 in order to get it to a tiebreaker, and then took over the match from there by winning 17 of the last 21 points.
The all-freshman team of
Brandon Vu and
Caleb Settles also had a tight match against regional rivals Rocco Mendez and Kishan Kersten of Trinity (Tex.) but came through with some clutch points under pressure to take a 7-5, 7-6 (7-2) win. The Stag duo was not broken in the entire match, and earned the only service break for either team at 6-5 in the first. Pham fell in a consolation match in singles to Ryan Warren of Trinity 6-3, 6-3.
Mareedu will next match up with Drover-Mattinen of RPI, who came in as the No. 3 seed in the singles tournament, and advanced with a 6-4, 7-6 win over Marco Siviero of Gustavus Adolphus and a 7-5, 6-3 win over Efe Comu of Emory. That match will be played tomorrow at 9 a.m. local time (6 a.m. Pacific) with the other semifinal seeing Ethan Green of Denison (seeded No. 4) face Alex Feies of Carnegie Mellon, who upset second-seeded Vuk Vuksanovic of Tufts in the quarterfinals.
Pham, meanwhile, will face Cameron Yang of Whitman in a singles consolation match, while Pham and Robinson will face Quinn Wicklunbd and Jordan Theron of Sewanee in the doubles consolation semis, and Settles and Vu will battle Christian Liew and Ruilin Feng of Emory.
