Rutgers-Newark 9, St. Joe's 0 | Rutgers-Newark 8, Berkeley 1
Highlights
NEWARK, N.J. (April 7, 2017) – The Rutgers University-Newark men's tennis team – playing for the first time since way back on March 25 – rolled to a pair of home triumphs Friday afternoon on The Golden Dome Courts. The Scarlet Raiders opened the day with a 9-0 shutout of St. Joseph's College – Brooklyn, and they came back with an 8-1 rout of Berkeley in the nightcap.
Rutgers-Newark improves to 5-3 overall and has now won three-straight matches. The Scarlet Raiders will visit Ramapo College Saturday afternoon in a Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) showdown. Both Berkeley and St. Joe's drop to 1-2 in defeat.
"It was great to finally get back on the courts after being off for almost two weeks," said Head Coach
Tom Battaglia. "The guys needed some live match-play experience after beating each other up at practice."
Rutgers-Newark wasted little time in starting the day strong, rolling to a 3-0 lead after doubles action against St. Joe's. The Scarlet Raiders dropped three total doubles games, as
Ray Fan and
Brandon Davis won 8-2 at No. 1,
Nadeem Hilal and
Parth Shah blanked the opposition at No. 2 and
Stan Wu and
Joe Codomo rolled 8-1 out of the third doubles slot.
R-N carried over the momentum into singles play. Davis won 6-1, 6-2 at No. 1 and Fan cruised by the same exact tally at No. 2. Hilal and Shah each only dropped single games out of the third and fourth slots, and Codomo and
Alan Yu did the same.
Newark swept the doubles tallies in the second match against Berkeley College as well. The closest action came at No. 3 with
Alan Yu and
Kevin Martin picking up a hard-fought 8-6 triumph, and the pairings of Fan/Davis and Codomo/Shah each earned resounding victories at one and two.
David won a three-set battle out of the first singles slot, 6-0, 3-6, 6-1, and Hilal earned a clean-sheet win at No. 3 (6-0, 6-0).
Richard Nguyen won 6-0, 6-2 at No. 4, and Wu came back for a nice 4-6, 6-0, 6-4 win at No. 5. Senior
Abhinav Dani was responsible for the final Rutgers-Newark point, rolling 6-1, 6-1 at sixth singles.
The Scarlet Raiders have now won 26 of their last 27 individual matches, improving to 5-3 overall and 4-1 this spring.
"We looked good out there today, and once the matches ended the guys immediately started talking about tomorrow at Ramapo," added Battaglia. "The team has been working hard and waiting for this match, so I think we are all excited to see what tomorrow brings."
First serve Saturday at Ramapo is slated for 1 p.m.
