No. 19 Tartans Roll Over No. 13 Redlands

(REDLANDS, Calif.) - The No. 19 Carnegie Mellon University men's tennis team continued its spring break trip in California with a 5-4 victory over No. 13 University of Redlands on Wednesday, March 12 in Redlands, California.

The Tartans were down 1-2 after the doubles matches with the sole win coming from the team of juniors, Will Duncan (Newbury Park, Calif./Newbury Park) and Christian Heaney-Secord (Westwood, Mass./Westwood), at the number one position, 8-6.

The Tartans dominated in number three, four, and six singles winning in straight sets.

Freshman Kiril Kirkov (Tampa, Fla./C. Leon King) grabbed a victory at number four singles winning 6-2, 6-1, to tie the match score at 2-2.  Next to win for the Tartans was freshman Kunal Wadwani (Saratoga, Calif./Ballarmine College Prep) at six singles. Wadwani tied the match at three all, defeating his opponent 6-1, 6-3 before Duncan gave Carnegie Mellon its first lead with a 6-4, 6-3 victory at number three singles.

While sophomore Abhishek Alla (Hyderabad, India/IMG Pendleton School) was heading to a third set tiebreaker at number one singles, freshman Kenny Zheng (Pennington, N.J./Hopewell Valley Central) quietly solidified the victory for the Tartans. Playing number five singles, Zheng went down in the first set 4-6, but fought back to win the match in the next two sets 6-4 and 6-1.

The Tartans are now 9-3 on the season and will be competing again Friday, March 14 against University Athletic Association counterpart and No. 1 University of Washington in the first round of the Steg-Hen Invitational hosted by Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in Claremont, California.