FLUSHING, N.Y. (Mar. 6, 2020) - The opposition may have only had five players, but the Queens College men's tennis team was pushed to the limit by Chestnut Hill on Friday (Mar. 6) before the Knights came away with a 5-2 victory at the Queens College Tennis Center. Queens is now 6-1 on the year, winning its sixth consecutive match of the spring season.

Chestnut Hill came to Flushing without a sixth player, meaning that the Knights were up by a 1-0 score before the match even started thanks to a sixth-singles default. Additionally, the Griffins would be down a tandem in doubles play which meant that Queens would need to win just one of the two remaining doubles contests to pull ahead by a 2-0 margin. That win would come at first-doubles, but it would not be easy as Kareem Rashad and Moritz Borges battled Tom Pitchley and Erik Jorsal in a marathon contest. Down 5-4 to the Griffins and serving to stay alive in the match, Rashad bulldozed his way to the game and a 5-5 score before hitting several nifty passing shots to break Chestnut Hill and pull ahead by a 6-5 advantage. Borges served out the match as Queens would win 7-5 in the tandem and claim the two-point lead. Mariano Bibiloni and Tim Ostheimer had a similarly guttural experience at second-doubles until the ending, with the Griffins' Kiki Dagneaux and Antoine Cautier claiming a 7-6 (7-3) victory in the long-winded albeit meaningless affair.

Lucas Demuth had Dagneaux on the ropes in second-singles before pulling out a 6-0, 7-6 (7-4) battle to put Queens ahead by a 3-0 lead. The Knights needed just one more point to secure the victory, but that would not come for some time. Rashad and Pitchley went to a furious tiebreaker in the first set of their top-flight singles match before Chestnut Hill's No. 1 bested QC's No. 1; Pitchley rolled to a 7-6 (12-10), 6-4 victory. From there, the final three matches would go the distance at Nos. 3, 4 and 5 as Borges clinched the match with a 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 triumph over Jorsal in fourth-singles. Eduardo Marino was bested by Antoine Gautier in a 6-4, 3-6, 2-6 loss at the fourth flight and Bibiloni closed out the contest with a 5-7, 6-4, 7-5 win at fifth-singles against Kai Adler. 

Queens will host Staten Island on Mar. 19 in its next contest at the QC Tennis Center at 3 p.m.