No. 2 Men’s Tennis Advances to Fourth Consecutive BIG EAST Championship Match with 4-1 Victory against No. 3 Georgetown

Saturday, April 22

Cayce S.C. (Cayce Tennis and Fitness Center)

1 p.m.

St. John's University

Georgetown

No. 2 Men’s Tennis Advances to Fourth Consecutive BIG EAST Championship Match with 4-1 Victory against No. 3 Georgetown

4/22/2023 8:19:00 PM | Men's Tennis

Box Score Box Score (PDF)

The Red Storm will take on fourth-seeded Butler on Sunday at 1 p.m. for the BIG EAST Title

By: Andrew Loewe

CAYCE, S.C. – The St. John's men's tennis team advanced to the BIG EAST Championship Match with a 4-1 victory over No. 3 Georgetown in the BIG EAST Tennis Championships semifinals by Jeep on Saturday afternoon at the Cayce Tennis and Fitness Center.

The Red Storm (19-5) will advance to their fourth-straight title game and aims to win its second title under current head coach, Dillon Pottish.

The Hoyas were able to take two of the three doubles matches to clinch the first point of the match. Akira Morgenstern and Derek Raskopf gave Georgetown the early advantage winning the first match, 6-1 over Ryota Kaneda and Giuseppe De Camelis. The Red Storm's top pairing of Axel Vila Antuna and Diogo Marques soon after were victorious, 6-3, against Kieran Foster and Zamaan Moledina. This set up a 1-1 tie with the last match to finish between the Johnnies' Nishant Dabas and Carl Gustafsson and Georgetown's Jake Fellows and Arthur O'Sullivan. With the match tied at 5, the Hoyas' No. 2 duo were able to string together the final two games to take a 7-5 victory and clinch the point for Georgetown.

The resurgent Red Storm surmounted an early deficit and claimed four straight-set victories to earn atrip to the title match. De Camelis gave St. John's their first point of the match with a 6-3, 6-3, defeat of Adhvyte Sharma. Seconds later, the Red Storm took a 2-1 lead over the Bulldogs with Kaneda's victory over Raskopf, 6-1, 6-3. Marques was the next to win with a 6-4, 6-2, victory in the top spot over Fellows. Antuna won the final point on an ace to win the fourth and championship-bid point for the Red Storm. After a 7-6 first set victory, he swept Foster, 6-0, to send the Johnnies to the championship match.

Fourth-seeded Butler upset top-seeded Creighton, 4-1, in the same time slot as the Red Storm. The Bulldogs won their quarterfinal match against fifth-seeded DePaul, 4-1. Butler finished the regular season 13-9 overall and 4-1 in league play. In their second conference match of the spring, the Bulldogs were swept by Georgetown, 7-0.

The two programs did not meet in the regular season this year. The two schools last met last spring in the BIG EAST semifinals. The Red Storm pulled out a 4-1 victory, in the only postseason match-up against the Bulldogs. The Johnnies are 3-0 all-time against Butler.

St. John's will hope to notch its seventh BIG EAST Title on Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m. against the fourth-seeded Butler Bulldogs at the Cayce Tennis and Fitness Center. Live stats will be provided by IonCourt and Flo Sports will carry a live stream. Both links can be found on RedStormSports.com.