CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The No. 43-ranked University of Denver men's tennis team (23-1, 5-0 Summit) suffered its first and only loss of the 2024 season to No. 22-ranked Michigan State in the first round of the NCAA Division I Men's Tennis Championship on Friday.
 
No. 3 seed Denver battled in both singles and doubles, keeping the match tighter than it appeared in the final score, a 4-0 win for No. 2 seed Michigan State.
 
With the result, Denver's historic season came to an end with only one loss – to a top-25 opponent – in the team's 24 matches played in 2024. This season, Denver set program Division I records for most wins (23, four more than the previous record of 19 in 2010) and fewest losses in a completed season (1, three fewer than the previous record of 4 in 2021).
 
Doubles:
Denver nearly completed a tremendous comeback in doubles, ending up in two tiebreaks to decide the point at Nos. 2 and 3, but MSU ultimately clinched a 1-0 lead.
 
The Spartans jumped out with a win on the top court but with the pressure on, the Pioneers responded on the remaining two courts. At No. 2 doubles, graduate student Marvin Schaber and junior Daniel Sancho Arbizu rallied back from giving up an early break and facing a 2-5 deficit to win four straight games and eventually end up in a tiebreak. They went into the changeover up 4-2 but conceded the next five points to give the doubles point to MSU.
 
Graduate student Anish Sriniketh and sophomore Raffaello Papajcik also found themselves in a tiebreak after a back-and-forth battle at No. 3 doubles. They traded minibreaks early but jumped out to a 5-2 lead. The match was abandoned with the DU team up 5-3.
 
Singles:
Though Michigan State won the first three singles matches to finish, Denver kept things tight, forcing third sets in the Nos. 2 and 5 matches while also pushing multiple sets to 7-5 or 7-6.
 
MSU claimed wins at Nos. 4 and 6 to move within a point of the overall win, but DU continued battling on the four remaining courts. In the last of the first sets to wrap up, senior Nicolas Herrero Cuesta captured a hard-fought win in a tiebreak against No. 9-ranked Ozan Baris. The players traded breaks at the start of the set and then again at the end before they found themselves in the breaker, which followed a similar pattern. Herrero Cuesta claimed the first minibreak lead before Baris leveled things, and both players held set points before the Denver senior won the last three points for a 9-7 victory. Baris gained a break lead in the second set and was up 4-2 when the dual was clinched.
 
At No. 5 singles, Papajcik took the opening set, 6-4, breaking in the opening game and then rallying back from a break down with four-straight games won. The second set followed a near-inverse pattern with the players trading breaks early before MSU's Max Sheldon came back from 2-4 down to force a decisive set, 7-5. Play was on serve with Papajcik up 2-1 when the match was abandoned.
 
Schaber held a 4-1 lead in his No. 3 singles match but gave the break lead back for 4-4. He again surrendered his serve late to go down 5-6, and MSU's Aristotelis Thanos consolidated to take the first set. The second set again saw Schaber go up a break midway through before MSU got back to even terms at 5-all.
 
The clinching match for MSU came in a three-set, back-and-forth fight at No. 2 singles. After breaking back once early, Sancho Arbizu ultimately saw the first set get away before he began a comeback with a dominant performance and a bagel in the second set. He continued momentum into the third set, taking a 3-0 lead before No. 53-ranked Ronald Hohmann from MSU rattled off five-straight games. Sancho Arbizu got back to level terms at 5-5, though Hohmann broke one final time for clinch the win at 7-5.
 
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