On the doubles court, Nguyen and MacMaster again rolled to an easy 8-3 win, and the second team of Steinroeder and Yeung took an 8-4 win. Lam and Mahlangu won, 8-5.

“Friday was an impressive performance for our first matches of the season, especially after only starting practice on Tuesday,” Steinroeder said. “We were that strong against that good of a team, and we finished strong that night against USD too.”

Despite the impressive performance, the Crimson still has much to work on—namely, it must find suitable doubles tandems if it wants to repeat the dominance it achieved last year. While the top duo of MacMaster and Nguyen is set, the other spots are in flux as the team works its new freshmen into the lineup.

“I’ve been playing with Brian, and he has a really good doubles game,” Steinroeder said. “We had a good match against USD, and lost tight ones in the other two. If the coaches keep us together, I think we can be good.”

Still, it was a good weekend for Harvard, and gives the team hope as it prepares to get its first look at its conference rivals at next weekend’s Ivy Tournament in New Haven.

“It was really encouraging to see that everyone came ready to battle,” Chaudhuri said. “Our goal is to keep improving each day, and at the end of the season we’ll be leagues ahead of where we are now.”

—Staff writer Justin C. Wong can be reached at justincwong94@gmail.com.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: September 17, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the class years of Shaun Chaudhuri and Alex Steinroeder. In fact, they are juniors, not sophomores.