Freshman Evan King’s star is rising as quickly as the 100-degree temperatures at the Napa Valley Invitational, where the Michigan men’s tennis team played this weekend.

King reached the championship match before losing to California’s Jonathan Dahan in the final. On his way, he beat Mississippi senior Kalle Norberg, the 31st-ranked player in the country, 5-7, 6-4, 6-4.

“Evan definitely played very well,” Michigan coach Bruce Berque said. “He had a good win the first day, and on the second day, he beat a very good college player who was ranked pretty high.”

Berque described the event as “somewhat informal,” but it was loosely based in a round-robin format. There were three other teams competing with Michigan — Ole Miss, Cal and Harvard — though the invitational was scored individually. Michigan was supposed to match up with each of those teams for one day, but since the number of players on each team was uneven, they sometimes had to mix and match.

Along with King, fellow freshman Chris Cha also made his collegiate debut. Cha got off to a slow start, dropping the first set of his first match 6-0, but roared back to take the next two sets 6-3, 6-4 to win the match. He then won his second match, but, like King, lost yesterday.

Berque said Cha did very well despite battling the flu early in the event.

“He almost didn’t make the trip because he has been sick,” Berque said. “But he ended up winning two out of three singles matches and two out of three doubles matches.”

Berque said a lot of his other players were also fighting sickness, including juniors Chris Madden and Jason Jung.

“A lot of our guys had a touch of the flu,” he said. “So some of them were really weak, physically.”

Overall, the team won seven matches. While four of them were won by freshmen, Berque said he wasn’t worried at all about his upperclassmen, especially given the sickness going around.

Berque also said Jung, who sat out the last day, just needs to get healthy.

“Jason’s game, physically, looks better,” Berque said. “He just needs to get healthy and finish matches when he has the opportunity.

“Nothing really worries me. There were definitely more positives than negatives.”