The Cornell men’s tennis team will begin its Ivy League season on the road, facing No. 37 Yale on Saturday, April 4 and Brown on Sunday, April 5. Both matches are scheduled for a 1 p.m. start and will be streamed live.
This opening marks an important phase for Cornell, which is ranked No. 34 in the latest Intercollegiate Tennis Association rankings with a record of 12-2 this season. The team has secured ranked wins over Louisville, Yale, Penn (twice), Memphis, and Middle Tennessee. After nearly two weeks off following their recent sweep at Reis Tennis Center, the Big Red aims to continue its strong performance.
Sophomore Rodrigo Fernandes leads Cornell from the top spot with a national ranking of No. 80 and a record of 19-7 this season. Other key contributors include Eric Verdes (7-7) and Petar Teodorovic (13-6) in the upper lineup positions; Rethin Pranav Senthil Kumar (17-5), Felipe Pinzon (12-7), and Aman Sharma (9-5) have also performed well in singles play further down the order. In doubles competition, Senthil Kumar and Rushil Khosla are ranked No. 84 nationally with a record of 14-4; Pinzon and Teodorovic have started their NCAA qualifying campaign at 13-3; Fernandes teams up with Verdes as the nation’s No. 46 pair with a record of nine wins to three losses.
Head coach Silviu Tanasiou enters the weekend holding a career coaching record of 198 wins to 108 losses (.647 winning percentage). He is now just two victories away from becoming Cornell’s first men’s tennis coach to reach the milestone of 200 career wins after leading his teams to four NCAA tournament appearances—each time advancing past the first round.
Cornell previously defeated Yale earlier this year by a score of four matches to three during February’s ECAC Indoor Championships in Princeton. Although Yale leads their all-time series at fifty-five wins to twenty-five, Cornell has claimed victory in fourteen out of their last fifteen encounters since 2014—including six straight contests played at New Haven’s Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center under interim head coach Eduardo Ugalde.
Brown enters Sunday’s match under head coach Mike Fried with fifteen wins so far this season—including victories over Boston College, Temple, Richmond, Navy, and Georgetown—but trails recent history against Cornell having lost fifteen consecutive meetings despite holding an overall series lead at thirty-eight matches won versus thirty-four by Cornell.
