In one of the most competitive matches of the Harvard men’s tennis team’s season, the Crimson fell 4-0 in the second round of the NCAA tournament to Baylor yesterday afternoon. It was the farthest Harvard had advanced in the postseason since 1999.

On Saturday, the Crimson dispatched Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champion Marist, 4-0, in the first round of the tournament, held at the Beren Tennis Center.

The Crimson finished the season with a 15-6 record.

“I think the team performed great once we got used to the level [of play] we were seeing,” senior co-captain Dalibor Snyder said. “We hadn’t seen players like that in a couple months. Once we got readjusted, we competed well in every match.”

“But that’s just the result of playing in a weak Ivy conference,” Snyder added.

Not all of the players’ seasons are over, however. Freshman Jonathan Chu will take part in the NCAA singles tournament in late May, and he will team with junior Oli Choo in the doubles competition.

Baylor 4, Harvard 0

Even though the Crimson hosted the tournament subregional, it was a definite underdog against Baylor (27-1) in a match forced indoors to the Murr Center by afternoon rain.

The Bears were riding a 16-match winning streak since March and were ranked No. 6 in the 64-team tourney and No. 4 nationally. Harvard, in contrast, was unseeded in the tournament and carried a No. 33 national ranking.

The Crimson almost immediately showed that it was comfortable swinging away against such a high-ranking team, especially one filled with nationally top-ranked players.

At No. 1 doubles, the Harvard duo of Snyder and Chu, playing in only their third match together, faced Baylor’s Nathan McGregor and Markus Hornung, the No. 34-ranked doubles pair in the country. Snyder and Chu—an aggressive lefty-righty combination—hung early and got the match to 5-5.

The other two doubles matches were heading toward a split. Sophomore Chris Chiou teamed up with co-captain William Lee in the No. 2 spot, but got down quickly against the Bears’ Benjamin Becker and Zoltan Papp, eventually losing 8-3.

In the final doubles match, junior David Lingman and sophomore Mark Riddell cruised early on, going up 7-2 versus Matias Marin and Reiner Neurohr. Baylor managed to roll off five straight games, however, to tie the score at 7-7.

At that point, though, the No. 1 match was coming to an exciting conclusion. The Bears broke Snyder’s serve to go up 6-5, and finished off the Crimson 8-6 to win the doubles point.

“We had the points to win in almost every single match, especially the doubles,” Snyder said.