The Ball State men’s tennis team picked up a quality win on the road on Wednesday, as they defeated Purdue 4-3.
The Cardinals (5-3) have been looking to get better production out of their doubles matches ever since shifting the lineups last Friday versus Butler. The switch has helped them get off to better starts, and the doubles point set the tone once again today against the Boilermakers (1-7).
They claimed the second doubles point, and the third doubles tandem consisting of fourth-year Eli Herran and first-year Jacks Lancaster needed a tiebreak to win their match 7-6 (4).
Fourth-year Danilo Kovacevic won 7-5, 6-3 to get singles play started for Ball State. Second-year Nathaniel Webster played an extremely close first set but comfortably won his second, winning 7-6(1), 6-0.
Purdue captured wins on the second, fifth and sixth courts, which evened up the match at three. That left the match up to the fourth singles court, where Ball State’s Eli Herran and Purdue’s Milledge Cossu were in the midst of a back-and-forth affair.
Herran dropped the first set in a tiebreaker, losing 6-7 (3). The second set was closely contested as well, and Herran found a way to pull it out 7-5. He used the momentum to breeze through the last set 6-2, and give the Cardinals a road win over a Big Ten team.
Ball State has won three of its last four and will look to take the momentum into its upcoming three-match homestand.
They’ll get it started on Friday versus Xavier, with first serve scheduled for 2 p.m. at the Northwestern YMCA.
Contact Caleb Zuver with comments at cmzuver@bsu.edu or on Twitter @zuves35.
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