Receiving at 5-4, Lingman held six match points, but once again, Nieto staved off elimination.

“It’s always tough to be the last guy out on the court,” Chu said. “You think in the back of your mind, ‘I could win this, I could lose this.’

“It’s a lot of fantasy when you’re [just] trying to play tennis.”

After losing the final set 7-5, Lingman was frank.

“[Nieto] took a few chances and came up with a few miraculous shots,” he said. “I missed a couple shots. I missed one passing shot on match point by about an inch. So sometimes things just don’t go your way.

“But it was unfortunate for the team, because they’d fought back so hard, and all I wanted was to give it to them to finish off the week.”

Lingman’s teammates—who are all quick to point out that other Crimson players also lost—remain the first to praise him.

“We support Dave, and we’re proud of everything he does,” Chu said. “No one is to blame for this. We fought hard as a team, and we all brought what we could today.”

Mandeau agreed.

“David probably feels like he lost the match for us,” he said, “but the other guys win and lose points. He happened to be the last guy out there.”

And though losing is never fun, perhaps it was constructive that such a loss come “now, and not in the NCAA tournament,” Chu said. “It’s nice to have a little bittersweet feeling at the end so we have something to work for.”

After all, he added, “everything is a building block for something bigger and better.”