Tennis to serve to Binghamton, Stony Brook

The men’s tennis team will return home this weekend for two matches against nonconference foes Binghamton and Stony Brook, looking to rebound from a tough loss at the hands of Ivy League rival Harvard in the finals of the Eastern Conference Athletic Championships this past Monday. Binghamton and Stony Brook represent some of the most difficult nonconference competition that Columbia will see all season. The two home matches this weekend begin a four-match homestand for the Lions, after which they will travel to Ithaca to take on Cornell in their Ivy League opener.

“I am definitely very cognizant of the fact that Binghamton is a very good team now,” head coach Bid Goswami said. “They are very good and very deep. We beat them in a close match at home last year. It will be a very good test.”

The Lions’ first opponent this weekend will be the Bearcats, who are on a five-match win streak, including two victories over Ivy schools. Binghamton beat Brown in Rhode Island 5-2, and followed that up with a 5-2 win over Cornell in Ithaca. Binghamton also comes into the match with the No. 1-ranked singles player in the region in junior Sven Vloedgraven. Vloedgraven won the ITA Regional Championships in the fall, cementing his position as one of the top players in the Northeast. Coming in at No. 2 in the singles rankings for the region is Columbia’s No. 1 player, senior Jon Wong, creating what promises to be an intriguing battle at the top spot in the lineup. In both of the matches against Brown and Cornell, Vloedgraven won his match at No. 1 singles in straight sets.

“He’s very, very steady,” Goswami said of Vloedgraven. “He never mishits. He returns every ball. He’s a tall kid who moves around well, and keeps a lot of balls in play and makes you earn every point. But Jon, at our home courts, goes through the ball pretty well, but he has to play well to win.”

Last season, the Lions took out the Bearcats by a lopsided score of 6-1. In that match, Columbia jumped all over Binghamton in the doubles point, winning two of the matches by scores of 8-1 and 8-2. In singles play, Wong won at No. 1 singles against Moshe Levy, but then-senior Bogdan Borta was defeated by Vloedgraven at No. 2 singles in straight sets. The rest of the singles players for Columbia also won their matches in straight sets, giving the Lions a relatively straight forward win.

The Stony Brook Seawolves come into Saturday on a three match win streak, in which they have defeated their opponents by a combined score of 19-2. The Seawolves’ top singles player is Ivan Rummel, a junior who is ranked No. 18 in the region’s singles rankings. Stony Brook has defeated Fairfield, Army and Connecticut this spring, and has looked especially strong in doubles play this season, winning doubles in all three of their matches. The Seawolves have looked strong in singles over their past two matches as well, dropping only one set in all 12 singles matches.

“Stony Brook is good too,” Goswami said. “Their top two guys did well in Regionals [in the fall], both European, and both reached the round of 16.”

Last season, Columbia easily defeated Stony Brook 7-0, dropping only two sets in singles play. The Lions won the doubles point easily, winning the top two doubles matches by identical scores of 8-3. In singles, Wong set the tone for Columbia in the No. 1 spot, defeating Rummel by a score of 6-0, 6-2. The Lions’ toughest matches were at No. 2 and No. 5, where Borta and then-freshman Haig Schneiderman won their matches in third set super-tiebreaks.

The Lions will be in action on Friday against Binghamton and on Saturday against Stony Brook. Both matches are scheduled to begin at 2 p.m.