Seniors Barrett Franks, Shaun Bernstein and Alex Buzzi weren’t going to let the Wolverines — who were riding a three-game skid prior to beating Wisconsin last weekend — lose momentum playing in their final two matches at home.
On senior day, one week before the Big Ten Tournament, the Michigan men’s tennis team needed two big wins against conference foes Indiana and Purdue. And it got them.
Friday, Michigan handily defeated the Hoosiers (3-7 Big Ten, 15-15 overall), largely due to the convincing play of Bernstein, who triumphed in both his doubles and singles matches and moved into 10th place on the Wolverines’ all-time doubles wins list.
“For the seniors, this is it for playing here in front of a crowd that’s cheering for you,” Bernstein said. “The most important thing was that we really laid it out on the line and had fun competing here, and we got two huge team wins.”
Juniors Alex Petrone and Michael Zhu fought hard to win the first doubles match of the afternoon, squeaking out an 8-6 win. Minutes later, Bernstein and his partner, freshman Kevin Wong, overpowered their opponents 8-6 as well, clinching the match’s initial doubles point for Michigan (6-5, 14-11).
On the singles side of play, the Wolverines’ success continued. The senior trio of Franks, Bernstein, and Buzzi all were triumphant, though Franks initially struggled, dropping his first set, 4-6, before taking the remaining two, 6-3, 6-3. While Michigan and Indiana split the first two matches, with Buzzi and Bernstein prevailing 6-3, 6-2 and 6-4, 6-2, the Wolverines closed out the day by winning four in a row.
Michigan’s success carried over into Sunday against Purdue (7-4, 15-6), a much tougher opponent than the Hoosiers on paper. An impressive 15-4 record failed to intimidate Franks and Buzzi, who bounced back nicely from their doubles loss against Indiana by crushing their opponents, 8-3. Petrone and Zhu then salvaged the doubles point for Michigan, succeeding for the second time of the weekend by an even more lopsided score of 8-1.
Redshirt junior Justin Rossi’s match concluded first, as he trounced the Boilermakers’ No. 3 player, 6-3, 6-4, for the Wolverines’ first singles victory of the day. Following in his footsteps was Franks, who after dropping his first set, 6-3, rebounded effectively, winning his second and third sets, 6-0, 6-3. Franks also dropped his first set against Indiana before winning his second and third sets.
After Franks and Rossi’s victories, Petrone beat his opponent, 6-3, 6-4, after briefly going down a couple of games in the second set. All that was needed to secure Michigan’s 14th win of the season was a win by Buzzi, who was victorious after nearly conceding a second set he should’ve won easily. The senior won his first set, 6-4, and was leading 5-2 during the second set, but let his opponent slowly crawl back until he finally overpowered him in a tiebreaker, 7-6.
Bernstein had a chance to gain another point for the Wolverines in the match-ending tiebreaker, but lost 11-9, resulting in a 5-2 Michigan win.
The two wins were significant, as the Big Ten Tournament starts Thursday and the team’s seed will now likely be higher with a conference record over .500.
“Depending on the other results, we’ll probably be a five, six or seven seed in the Big Ten Tournament,” Michigan coach Bruce Berque said. “It’s not where we wanted to be, but it was a good way to finish, and it’s a nice way to end the regular season. Winning is the goal.”