Sensational Firebirds Claim 2nd Straight Victory, 9-0 vs. USciences

BOYDS, MD – The University of the District of Columbia men's tennis team claimed its 2nd straight victory on Thursday as the Firebirds defeated non-conference Division II East Region foe USciences, 9-0. 

The Firebirds (3-2) were in excellent form as they took all possible matches that included three doubles and six singles matches. The Devils, a member of the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference (CACC), fell to 3-6 overall. 

An accomplished doubles performance all around was started by the senior duo of Alexis Baguelin and Ander Murillo who completed a solid 8-4 win over Sahas Chandragiri and Chandat Phan for the first point of the game. They were shortly followed by No. 3 doubles pair Marco Feligioni and Josip Marinic with the same score of 8-4, and then the nationally ranked combination of Rok Bozic and Diego Pinto completed doubles with another 8-4 win to head into singles play 3-0 up. 

With a 3-0 lead, UDC wanted to make sure a match victory was in sight and that was done first by Diego Pinto who cruised to a 6-1, 6-1 win against Chrandragiri at No. 3, and 2016-17 East Coast Conference 2nd team honoree Baguelin secured UDC's win with a 6-0, 6-3 triumph over Nguyen at No. 2. 

The game of the day, however, goes to a fantastic performance by Bozic and his opponent Borna Novak at No. 1. With the first set taken 6-2 by Novak, Bozic responded in the 2nd set to make it 2-6, 6-3. With both players refusing to give up the match, they played an outstanding tiebreak in the final set in which Bozic completed an 18-16 victory. 

The District of Columbia completed the perfect day with Murillo winning 6-4, 6-2 at No. 4 against Phan, followed by No. 5 Marinic coming from a set behind to take a 4-6, 6-0, 10-3 win vs. Chamala, and finally for a clean-sweep Feligioni won 6-3, 6-1 at No. 6 vs. Halperin. 

The Firebirds will be in action in Philadelphia against regional rivals Chestnut Hill, Saturday, March 17th at 1:00PM.