ROME, Ga. -
Sibi Raja and
Henry Wilson saved four match points, and won on the fifth match point of their own, to take a dramatic 18-16 win in a third-set tiebreaker of their ITA Cup Semifinal on Saturday at the Rome Tennis Center. Raja and Wilson become the third all-freshmen team to advance to the ITA Cup doubles championship match, with Larry Wang and
Gui Schils having won the title in 2005, and Philip Martin and Nathan Arimilli reaching the final in 2021.
Advik Mareedu also moved on to the finals with a dominant 6-0, 6-1 win in his ITA Cup Semifinal, stretching his winning streak against Division III opponents to 44 and leaving him one win shy of his third ITA Cup national title.
Wilson and Raja were matched up with Jacob Linares and Nicholas Fischer of Hobart, who had defeated top seeds Gage Gohl and Tyler Haddorff of Gustavus Adolphus in the quarterfinals. The Stags freshmen won a dramatic first set 7-6(5), having had eight set points, including a 2-5, love-40 lead. Linares and Fischer seized a 3-0 lead in the tie-break, but Raja and Wilson finally converted on their ninth set point to secure the first set. In the second set, the CMS duo built a commanding 4-1, 40-love lead, but then were unable to convert the next 16 game points, and relinquished the second set 7-5.
The decisive match tiebreaker went way past the 10-point mark, though, as the two teams combined to fight off eight match points, before the Stags earned the 18-16 win to advance to the finals. Raja and Wilson will face Matthew Johnson and Ajay Kartik of Emory, who won their semifinal 6-4, 6-4.
It will also be a CMS vs. Emory battle in the singles final as well, as Mareedu moved on with a 6-0, 6-1 win over Gage Gohl of Gustavus Adolphus. Mareedu won the ITA Cup singles final as a freshman in 2022, and then won it again last year, before completing a 36-0 season against Division III opponents by winning the NCAA title in the spring as well.
Mareedu will meet Ruilin Feng of Emory, an unseeded player who has yet to drop a set, defeating the No. 4 seed (Mark Kneiss of Bowdoin) 6-2, 6-4 in the quarterfinals, and No. 2 seed Kael Shah of Denison, 6-1, 6-3 in the semifinals. Shah and Mareedu met in last year's NCAA singles title in Claremont.
The singles championship will take place at 8 a.m. local time (5 a.m. Pacific), while the doubles final is scheduled for 11 a.m.
