SMU men’s tennis beat Princeton 4-2 in Austin, earning its first NCAA Championship match win since 2016.
SMU men’s tennis picked a pretty good time to end a postseason drought.
No. 32 SMU defeated No. 37 Princeton, 4-2, on Friday at the Weller Tennis Center in Austin, advancing to the second round of the NCAA Championship.
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It’s the Mustangs’ first NCAA Tournament match win since 2016 and the first under head coach Grant Chen.
SMU set the tone in doubles and then held off a Princeton rally in singles. Trevor Svajda and Jerry Barton opened doubles with a sharp 6-2 win over Paul Inchauspe and Top Nidunjianzan at No. 1.
Vikas Deo and Georgi Georgiev followed with another 6-2 victory at No. 3 to give the Mustangs the opening point.
Georgiev kept the momentum rolling in singles. He beat Nidunjianzan 6-2, 6-1 at No. 2, improving to 17-5 on the season and pushing SMU’s lead to 2-0.
Princeton answered with wins at No. 1 and No. 3 singles to tie the match, including No. 6 Inchauspe’s victory over No. 2 Svajda. But SMU didn’t blink.
Krish Arora put the Mustangs back in front with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Sebastian Sec at No. 4, moving his season record to 14-11.
Then Noah McDonald delivered the clincher at No. 6, beating Milan Markovits 7-6(4), 7-6(2) in a tense straight-set battle.
McDonald’s win was his 12th of the year and sealed a landmark result for SMU.
The Mustangs now move on to Saturday’s second round at 4 p.m. CT, where they’ll face the winner of Texas and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
For SMU, Friday wasn’t just an upset opportunity handled. It was a program reset moment.
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