DENVER – The No. 43-ranked University of Denver men's tennis team (17-0, 1-0 Summit) started its Summit League schedule with a 7-0 sweep of North Dakota outdoors at Denver Tennis Park on Sunday.
 
DU extended its unbeaten start to the 2024 season, moving to 17-0, to remain the last undefeated Division I team in the nation.
 
Coach's Notes:
From head coach Drew Eberly: "We played a very good North Dakota team that has some young, new guys who are going to cause a lot of problems in the Summit League going forward. I thought our guys did a good job today taking care of business, especially starting in singles. We jumped out to get five first sets pretty quickly, and the guys played well throughout the match. I'm glad that we finished the week 3-0, and next week we've got a really tough trip at Drake and Omaha, which is always tough at their places, so we'll prepare hard and get ready for those matches."
 
Doubles:
DU made it 10-consecutive doubles points won, taking the Nos. 1 and 3 matches on Sunday. For the first time, senior Nicolas Herrero Cuesta and sophomore Raffaello Papajcik teamed up and dropped just a single game after winning the first four games at No. 1 doubles. Denver also debuted a new team at No. 3 doubles in graduate student Anish Sriniketh and junior Rikuto Yamaguchi, who exchanged breaks in three-straight games late before taking the match, 6-4.
 
At No. 2 doubles, graduate student Marvin Schaber and junior Daniel Sancho Arbizu rebounded from a break down to level things at 4-all, where the match ended after the doubles point was clinched.
 
Singles:
Denver raced out to a 6-0 lead with straight-sets victories on the first five singles matches to finish, starting with Herrero Cuesta on the No. 1 court. He equaled his best showing of the season by losing just four games in the match, grabbing 4-1 leads in both sets before breaking for 6-2 each time.
 
Senior Charlie Miller put DU up 3-0 with his win at No. 6 singles after claiming a 5-0 lead before winning the first set, 6-1. He jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the second before UND's Jerall Yasin began a slight comeback, though Miller would retake control at 5-3 before breaking in the final game.
 
Schaber clinched the dual for Denver with his third 6-1 6-4 win of the season. Like Herrero Cuesta and Miller, he claimed a 4-1 lead in a set, doing so in the first before claiming the set's final two games. His second set proved to be more equally contested, remaining on serve until the grad student broke for 5-4 and served it out.
 
Just minutes later, fellow graduate student Sriniketh wrapped up his match on the No. 5 court to grab his sixth singles win in eight matches this year. He broke in consecutive returns games midway through the first set and held serve for 6-2 before breaking yet again in the opening game of the second set. Though his opponent would get back on level terms, Sriniketh retook a lead at 4-3, winning his first of three-straight games to end the match.
 
Sancho Arbizu joined Herrero Cuesta and Schaber in winning his 14^th match of the season on Sunday. He joined them both in leading the first set, 4-1, and eventually claimed it, 6-2. After breaking to begin the second set, he rallied from down 2-4 to win the final four games.
 
The final match of the day to end was the only one not to end in two sets. Denver's Papajcik dropped the first set and was down a break early in the second before he mounted a comeback, claiming four of the last six games. The match was decided by a back-and-forth 10-point tiebreak in place of the third set. Again, he battled back from being a minibreak down early to change ends at 3-3. Neither player held more than a point lead for the remainder of the tiebreak until Papajcik won the final two points to take it, 11-9.
 
Up Next:
The University of Denver men's tennis team heads on the road for two Summit League matches during the penultimate week of the regular season, first at Drake on Friday, April 5, and then at Omaha on Sunday, April 7.
 
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