The Harvard men's tennis team headed to California for its annual spring break road trip and came within only a few games of shaking up the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) national team rankings.

The 28th-ranked Crimson scored easy victories over UC-Santa Barbara and Idaho, but it was the 4-3 losses to No. 19 Fresno State and No. 8 Southern Methodist that provided the excitement. The relatively young Crimson squad faced off against nationally ranked singles opponents in both those matches.

On Tuesday, March 27, Harvard met its first West Coast opponent, traveling to Fresno, CA, for a battle against the No. 19 Bulldogs. Perhaps perturbed by the cloudless Pacific weather, the Crimson came close but could not overcome in a 4-3 loss.

Head Coach David Fish decided to go with several different doubles combinations to start out the match. Nothing worked. The new pair of sophomore Oli Choo and freshman Cliff Nguyen fell 8-3 at No. 3 doubles, and then the usual No. 3 team of co-captain Anthony Barker and freshman George Turner went down next, losing at the No. 1 spot to the Bulldogs' Peter Luczak and David Mullins.

The doubles point was already lost, but the other new combo of junior William Lee and freshman Mark Riddell made a strong effort, losing only 9-7 to Sean Cooper and Nick Fustar, the 40th-ranked doubles team in the country.

With Harvard down 1-0, the singles became a fight to the finish. Nguyen, at No. 1 singles, got double goose-egged 6-0, 6-0 by Luczak, Fresno State's top player and No. 15 in the nation. Lee, however, put Harvard on the board with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Mullins.

Things started to look bleak when Turner blew a second-set lead and lost 6-4, 6-4 at No. 3 singles, but freshman Ryan Browne won a big 7-6, 7-6 match at No. 6 singles over Alex Krohn. The deciding match for the Bulldogs came at No. 5, where Barker and Alex Menichini were tied at a set apiece. Menichini then blew by Barker, 6-1, in the third set, for the win, giving Fresno State the overall victory. Choo later won at No. 2 to make the final score 4-3.

Two days later, the Crimson traveled to Santa Barbara where it would face its next three opponents. Harvard squared off against host UCSB on Thursday and fittingly made the Gauchos look as if they belonged on the pampas rather than the tennis courts.