Murali Qualifies for the NCAA Individual Championships

The Harvard men’s tennis team returned to Cambridge, Mass., to host the ITA New England Regional Tournament. Featuring Ivy League foes and other regional colleges, the ITA New England Regional gives players a chance to automatically qualify for the NCAA Championships. With 13 Division I regions in the country, the top two singles players and the top doubles team in each area automatically qualify for the national tournament.

Several Crimson players qualified for the main draw, with strong representation in both singles and doubles. On the doubles side, five pairs competed in the opening Round of 64. Of these teams, only freshman Evan Sharygin and sophomore Noah Gilligan lost their opening match, 7 (6)-8 in a hard-fought tiebreak.

The freshman tandem of Zachary Cohen and David Wu posted a solid 8-4 win over LeMoyne College before running into the sixth-seeded team, Yale’s Edward Liao and Zhengqing Ji, falling 2-8.

Sophomore and reigning Ivy League Rookie of the Year Nathan Blokhin teamed up with the highly touted freshman Bill Chan and earned the fourth seed in the doubles draw. However, after a comfortable 8-2 opening victory, the duo were surprisingly upset by Filipe Costa and Zihe Liao from Binghamton University, 8-6, in the Round of 32.

Junior Mitchell Lee and senior James MacDonald were seeded eighth in the tournament. The dynamic duo breezed through their first two matches, winning 8-1 against pairs from both Stonehill College and Boston College. In the Round of 16, Lee and MacDonald made no mistake, easily sweeping LeMoyne’s representatives 8-0. However, the Harvard team eventually lost in the quarterfinals to Cornell, 8-4. The Big Red’s pair of junior Rushil Khosla and sophomore Rethin Pranav Senthil Kumar went on to win the tournament.

The Crimson’s brightest doubles team was also the one with the highest expectations, as senior Rohan Murali and sophomore Kolos Kincses were given the third seed in the draw. After beating teams from Cornell, Yale, and Brown in the rounds of 64, 32, and 16, respectively, Harvard’s top doubles team beat the upstarts Vishal Prakash and Andrey Pikulin from Quinnipiac 8-3 in the quarterfinals.

In the semifinals, it was much of the same story, as Murali and Kincses casually beat Lucas Kimelman and Tej Bhagra from Brown 6-2, 6-1. In the final, however, the Crimson barely missed automatic qualification after falling in a tight two-setter to the eventual champions, Khosla and Senthil Kumar.

As for the singles tournament, eight players for the Harvard men’s team qualified for the main draw, with Chan (sixth), Lee (10th), Blokhin (third), Kincses (12th), and Murali (second) all receiving seeds. Aside from Sharygin losing a tough three-setter, every Crimson player advanced to the Round of 32, where only Wu lost 6-1, 6-2 to the first overall seed, Rodrigo Fernandes of Cornell.

With a staggering seven players into the Round of 16, Harvard delivered mixed results on Saturday afternoon. While Lee, Murali, and Chan came up big with three straight-set wins, Blokhin lost a tough two-set match 6-4, 7-5 to ninth-seeded Eric Verdes of Cornell. Kincses fell 6-1, 7-6(3) to Yale’s Liao, while Cohen lost in straight sets to another Bulldog, William Zhang, 6-2, 7-6(3).

Despite this, three Crimson players made it to the quarterfinals. Lee, who had been on a tear, finally met his match against Verdes and lost 6-1, 6-2. Chan ran into Fernandes, who subsequently downed yet another Harvard player in straight sets, 6-3, 7-5. Murali, however, beat Zhang 6-3, 6-3 to reach his second semifinal of the tournament.

Murali, facing fourth seed Cezar Gabriel Papoe, dismantled his opponent, beating him 6-1, 6-2 to reach the NCAA singles tournament. Since the two finalists automatically qualify for the singles tournament, Murali and Fernandes decided to both forgo the championship match for precautionary reasons. Still, for Murali, this is a huge individual accomplishment as the Harvard men’s tennis team continues its hot start in the fall with a 36-22 record so far.

The Crimson now has a short break before heading to Princeton, N.J., to compete in the Ivy League Qualifier Tournament. Top performers will qualify for the ITA Conference Masters in Georgia later this year.

—Staff writer Alex S. Kim can be reached at [email protected].