NORTH HAVEN, Conn – A snowy evening set the stage as  Quinnipiac men’s tennis took on North Dakota Saturday evening. Each team was looking to break its respective losing streaks with a win. In the first match between the two schools in program history, North Dakota came out on top, winning the match 7-0. 

The Fighting Hawks brought intensity and took early game leads on the Bobcats. Despite knocking Quinnipiac down early, it battled back with a couple of game wins of its own. Senior Kemal Karagozoglu and junior Shaurya Sood remained at the No. 1 doubles spot. It was a hard fought match where the pair at times looked like they were turning the match into their favor, however the Fighting Hawks were the better team and took the match 6-1. 

A loss never feels good, but Quinnipia had a crowd in attendance who hyped up the team when they got points. Karagozoglu and Sood earned points, hearing the crowd behind them allowed them to gain some momentum. 

“I always love when other teams come to support us, it’s amazing,” Karagozoglu said. “I wish it happened more for sure.”

Juniors Ayato Arakaki and Donovan Brown put up a good fight in their match. In the sixth game of the set, down 4-1, Arakaki took his opponents to spike city. On the heels of Brown’s impressive serving, it forced the opponent to hit a lazy pop up which Arakaki took advantage of by slamming it into the ground for the point. The win brought the pair within a two games reach in the match, but much like Sood and Karagozoglu’s match, the Fighting Hawks were consistent and overpowering, taking the match 6-2. 

“Every first serve seemed to go in,” Brown said. “It allowed Ayato to be all over the net and just clean up anything that was coming over.”

The third match was called since North Dakota won two-out-of-three doubles matches giving them the doubles point and a 1-0 match lead overall. Quinnipiac had a hill to climb being down 1-0 early against a tough North Dakota program that came with a 10-2 record on the season. 

After losing the first three singles matches, Quinnipiac lost the match. Graduate student Andreas Whalen-Merediz, freshman Csanad Nyaradi, Sood and Brown lost their respective matches which gave North Dakota the overall match win. 

Arakaki battled in the No. 1 spot and pushed his match to a 10-point tiebreaker after winning the second set 7-6. The Saitama, Japan native lost 10-5 despite an impressive comeback. 

Similar to Arakaki, Karagozoglu took his match into a 10-point tiebreaker as well. It was a back and forth battle and it went past the 10-point limit, however the match is played by the rule of win by two points. Karagozoglu put up a good fight and kept his high energy, despite being away from the team on the backcourts, but lost 14-12. 

“I was next to Csanad (Nyaradi) who was playing six today,” Boom said. “A big thing we’re working on right now is bouncing the energy off of each other. So when he yells, I yell back and when I tell he yells back. We’re trying to support each other.”

The Bobcats will head to Niagara Falls to take on Niagara on Saturday, their first MAAC match of the season, looking to break their four-match losing streak. 

“It did not feel like a 7-0 loss,” head coach Bryan Adinolfi said. “We were fighting and I felt like we could’ve actually won any one of those matches. There are some things we want to work on obviously and you know, that’s what we’ll do. One day off and then back to the grind Monday.”