IU tennis beats Purdue

The No. 69 IU men’s tennis team played its fourth consecutive home match Wednesday against No. 63 Purdue. The team was coming off of a 7-0 shutout victory against Butler before coming into this match. The Hoosiers stopped the Boilermakers by defeating them by one point, winning 4-3.

IU was only able to win one out of the three doubles matches, so they did not walk away with the doubles point, but the players came through in singles.

After being down 1-0 early, the Hoosiers rallied back to score three quick points. Freshman Sam Monette defeated Mark Kovacs to give the team its first point of the competition.

Senior Josh MacTaggart took the lead for IU by winning against Purdue’s Szymon Tatarczyk, and senior Isade Juneau beat Pawel Poziomski in three sets. After the Hoosiers were up 3-1 on the Boilermakers, Purdue created a surge of its own. Krisztian Krocsko defeated freshman Daniel Bednarczyk to bring the Boilermakers within one point.

With the Hoosiers up 3-2, freshman Chris Essick and junior Dimitrije Tasic found themselves in close matches. Tasic battled back after losing the first set in order to push the second set to atiebreaker. His opponent was able to hold him off in order to win the entire match.

However, in Essick’s match, tied at 5-5 in the third and final set, the freshman closed the match by winning the last two games to clinch the entire match and the overall IU victory.

The win against Purdue pushed IU to a record of 12-10 and 9-3 at home. The team will play its fifth consecutive home match at noon Saturday against Iowa.

— Frank Bonner