No. 25 Men's Tennis vs. No. 18 Rensselaer
Friday, February 14 | 2:45 p.m.
Longfellow Tennis Club | Wellesley, Mass.

SERIES HISTORY
• Babson has a 2-3 record against Rensselaer over the past 25 years.
• The Beavers posted victories over the Engineers in 2022 and 2023 in the first two matches between the two since October of 2016.

LAST MEETING
• No. 16 Babson and No. 29 Rensselaer split the six singles matches but the Beavers were unable to rally from an early deficit after doubles and suffered a 6-3 loss to the Engineers on February 17, 2024 in Latham, N.Y.
• Jonah Wilson M'24 at No. 2, senior Ole Lepsoe at No. 3 and Kerem Ozlale at No. 6 posted singles victories for the Beavers. Senior Aiden Drover-Mattinen at No. 1, Bryce Burnham at No. 4 and sophomore Joel McCandless at No. 6 countered for the Engineers.

SCOUTING THE BEAVERS
• No. 25 Babson (4-0, 2-0 NEWMAC) opened the spring portion of the schedule with a pair of victories over Division I Bryant (5-2) and Nichols (7-0) back on February 2 in Cumberland, R.I.
• Senior Brady Anderson, sophomore Mattias Harrell and first-years Sebastian Mendoza and Edward Wang all recorded a pair of singles victories for the Beavers. Wang and senior Wesley Zhang also claimed a pair of wins in doubles.
• Anderson teamed up with first-year Louis Bourn for a doubles victory against Bryant, and the teams of Lepsoe/Mendoza and Harrell/first-year Mason Nguyen posted doubles win over Nichols. Bourn and junior Martin Mejia produced singles wins over the Bison.
• Wang (13-0) continued his impressive rookie year and leads the team in singles wins, while Mendoza (7-4) and Harrell (7-2) are tied for second. Anderson (7-4) has a team-high seven doubles wins, followed by Harrell (6-2) and Lepsoe (6-5).

SCOUTING THE ENGINEERS
• No. 18 Rensselaer (1-0) is making its spring debut at Babson after winning its only dual match last fall, a 7-0 verdict over Bard on September 22 in Troy, N.Y.
• Junior Sid Srinivasan and senior Jonathan McMillan teamed for a 6-1 win at No. 1 doubles and cruised to victories in the top two singles slots. First-year Boris Slesarev and junior Caden Marston swept the No. 2 doubles and Nos. 3 and 4 singles matches without losing a game, and first-years Debarshi Sen and Quoc-Uy Vo cruised to easy wins at No. 3 doubles and Nos. 5 and 6 singles.
• Drover-Mattinen, ranked third in Division III in the ITA rankings, had a strong fall season in tournament play. He took the singles title at the ITA Northeast Regional Championships and advanced to the Final Four of the ITA Cup back in October. Drover-Mattinen also competed in the doubles competition alongside junior Andy Zhu, and the pair exited in the round of 16.
• RPI went 17-2 last year and captured the Liberty League championship before falling to No. 9 Williams in the first round of the NCAA Championships.

NATIONALLY RANKED FOES
• Saturday's match for Babson is the first of four straight encounters and eight matches this spring against teams that are in the ITA Top 40 Team Rankings.
• The Beavers will face No. 3 Tufts in Wellesley on March 2; No. 5 Middlebury, No. 32 Salisbury, No. 30 Grinnell, No. 22 North Carolina Wesleyan and No. 32 Chapman in a spring break trip to California from March 16-21; and No. 23 MIT the first weekend in April in Babson Park.

POLL POSITION
• Babson was picked to finish second when the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) released its annual preseason coaches' poll last week.
• The Beavers received one of eight first-place votes to finish runner-up in the poll, while three-time defending champion and 23rd-ranked MIT received seven first-place votes to finish on top in the voting.

UP NEXT
• The Beavers will host No. 3 Tufts at the Longfellow Tennis Club in Wellesley on March 2, adjacent to the Babson campus.