HOBOKEN, N.J. (May 8, 2013) – The Stevens Institute of Technology men's tennis team will face Baruch College in the First Round of the NCAA Division III Men's Tennis Championship today at 11 a.m. on the indoor courts at the Magic Lincer Tennis Academy in Windsor, Conn. due to inclement weather.

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Program

Stevens is the de facto No. 3 seed as one of four unranked teams in the Amherst sub-regional, having posted a 15-7 overall record, with all seven losses coming to national top-27 opponents.  The Ducks earned the program's first-ever win over a ranked opponent this season in defeating previously unbeaten NCAA participant No. 30 The College of New Jersey and locked up an unprecedented fourth consecutive Empire 8 Athletic Conference title this past weekend, topping Ithaca College, 5-2, to secure the conference's automatic NCAA bid. 

Baruch enters the matchup with a 12-4 record, including dropping just three individual matches en route to a perfect 7-0 mark in CUNYAC play that culminated in a second straight conference title – the Bearcats' seventh in the past nine years.  Baruch ended the season on a seven-match winning streak that includes handing NCAA participant Farmingdale State College its only loss of the season.  The Bearcats reached the Second Round of last year's NCAA Championship for the second time in the program's history, losing 5-0 to No. 10 Bowdoin College after a 5-0 defeat of UMass-Dartmouth that earned the program a record 16^th win.

The Bearcats played only two regionally ranked teams this year in undefeated Northeast No. 8 MIT and No. 13 NYU and were swept by both, 9-0 and 5-0, respectively.  Stevens, meanwhile, defeated NYU, 5-4, less than a week prior to the Bearcats' matchup and fell to still-undefeated  MIT, 6-3, after the Engineers had been ranked No. 20 in the nation.  The Ducks also won at least two points in all eight of their matches versus ranked teams, including tight 6-3 losses at MIT and No. 27 Skidmore College as well as a 6-2 defeat at No. 9 Middlebury and a down-to-the-wire 5-4 loss at No. 23 Swarthmore College.

Baruch relies heavily on its doubles pairings, with junior Danil Ovechkin and senior Guy Goren going 7-2 at first doubles, senior Artem Gorbachevskiy and sophomore Joe Laskowski coming in 7-1 at second doubles and junior Phillip Bleustein and junior David Garzon recording a 6-0 mark at third doubles (4-1 at twos).  Ovechkin fronts the singles lineup and has posted a .500 record (6-6) at the top flight this season, while Gorbachevskiy has gone 7-4 at #2.  Goren is 4-1 at third singles (1-5 between first and second) while Bleustein is 5-2 at fourth, with a perfect 5-0 mark in matches at second, third and fifth as well.  Laskowski has yet to drop a match in eight contests at fifth singles and is 3-1 at courts three, four and six combined, while freshman Samuel Hajibai has come on late in the season to post an unbeaten 9-0 mark at third-sixth singles, with five wins at #6.  Garzon is also 4-0 at sixth singles but just 2-5 at three-fifth.

Stevens swept through the Empire 8 this season, capping a third straight season with an undefeated mark in conference play (7-0) before defeating #4 seed St. John Fisher College, 5-0, and #2 seed Ithaca College, 5-2.  The Ducks won an unprecedented fourth straight Empire 8 Championship and eighth conference title over the past nine years dating back to their four-year run in the Skyline Conference from 2004-07.  The team achieved a program-record No. 8 ranking the Northeast region of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Division III Men's Rankings this season, while freshman Matthew Heinrich (Hendersonville, Tenn.) and senior Chris Rosensteel (East Windsor, N.J.) were ranked as the No. 4 doubles pairing in the region and came in at No. 13 and No. 14, respectively, in the singles rankings this past week.

This will mark Stevens' sixth NCAA Championship appearance in the past seven years, over which the Ducks have advanced to the Second Round in each of the last three seasons and four of the last five.  In their last NCAA appearance in 2012, the Ducks topped Wilkes University, 5-1, in the First Round for the program's third-ever NCAA win before falling 5-1 to No. 29 MIT, with Stevens winning at second doubles and forcing a pair of three-set singles matches. The Ducks also advanced to the Second Round in 2011, winning 5-2 over Drew University but falling 5-1 at defending national champion No. 10 Middlebury College, while in 2010 Stevens received a bye in the First Round before falling 5-3 at No. 24 MIT, in which the Ducks were swept at doubles, including a tight 8-6 loss at threes, but mounted a furious rally behind straight-set victories at first, second and third singles and a three-set thriller at fifth singles that fell just short.

Head Coach Steve Gachko and the Ducks will start the quest for their first-ever regional finals appearance today with an 11 a.m. opening serve. The match will be available to view via LiveStats through this link.  Be sure to follow our live Twitter accounts as well: @StevensDucks and @Ducks_Tennis, and "Like" us on Facebook at StevensAthletics and Stevens Men's Tennis.
 
Amherst Regional 

First Round – Thursday, May 9
TCNJ vs. Babson                                                              11 a.m.
Stevens vs. Baruch                                                           11 a.m.
 
Second Round – Friday, May 10
No. 3 Amherst vs. TCNJ/Babson                                   9 a.m.
No. 22 Mary Washington vs. Stevens/Baruch              9 a.m.
 
Third Round – Saturday, May 11                                  9 a.m.