With a 4-3 loss to Brown in yesterday’s ECAC Division I Championship semifinal, the Harvard men’s tennis team relinquished its three-year stranglehold on the title.
The Crimson lost the doubles point—only its third pair of Dan Nguyen and Shantanu Dhaka won, 8-5—but knotted the score at 2-2 halfway through the singles competition.
Freshman Sasha Ermakov surmounted a 4-1, 40-15, third-set deficit to win at No. 2 singles, giving Harvard a 3-2 edge. His classmate Chris Clayton then lost at No. 3, knotting the score and putting pressure on the No. 1 match.
When sophomore Ashwin Kumar dropped his third set, the Bears clinched a berth in the final, something the Crimson had played in—and then won—for the last three years.
Harvard beat St. Joseph’s and Princeton before losing to Brown, and the Crimson now has two weeks off before the Louisville Invitational.
—REBECCA A. SEESEL
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