Photo courtesy of goxavier.com | Despite the overall team loss to Detroit Mercy, junior Jack Dykema won his No. 1 singles match in two sets by a score of 7-6, 6-4, on Saturday.
Men’s tennis has been active in the last several weeks with wins over Northern Illinois and Northern Kentucky on Feb. 24 and March 3, respectively. The team traveled to Orlando, Fla., last week to take on East Carolina and Radford, and while they did not win either matchup, they kept it close.
Against Radford, the Musketeers won two doubles matches and two singles matches. Freshman Brett Winters and sophomore Matthew Graft both won in singles, and in doubles, senior Gabriel Araujo and junior Jack Dykema were victorious in their match.
Most recently, Xavier fell to Dayton and Detroit Mercy last weekend. In Friday’s match against the Flyers, Dayton stormed in and took it 6-1.
Matthew Graft was the bright spot for Xavier, winning his singles match, but there were no doubles victories for the team from Cincinnati.
On Saturday, Detroit Mercy beat Xavier by the same margin as Dayton. This time, it was Dykema who won his singles match. He is coming off a very strong sophomore campaign and looks to carry that into the spring.
While the Musketeers have struggled lately, there are plenty of opportunities to make up ground as the season goes along. Xavier fans can travel to the team’s home court at the Eastern Hills Tennis Club this weekend for its final home matches of the year. The Musketeers will be taking on Big East foe Villanova on Saturday and Eastern Kentucky on Sunday.
This might be the final home weekend of the season, but the team can still make up ground on its overall record.
The Musketeers will travel to take on DePaul, Creighton, Marquette and Butler throughout the end of March and the beginning of April before the Big East Championships to finish the season in late April.
By: Paul Fristchner ~Staff Writer~