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PITTSBURGH, PA – For the third time in four matches, the 26th-ranked Johns Hopkins men's tennis team avenged a 5-4 loss from the regular season. Hopkins beat host and fifth-ranked Carnegie Mellon, 5-3, on Saturday afternoon to clinch a spot in the NCAA Quarterfinals for the fourth time in the last five years. The Blue Jays improve to 19-5 on the season, two wins shy of the program record, while the Tartans end their season at 17-7.

When these two teams met five weeks in Baltimore, Carnegie Mellon took a 2-1 lead after doubles with the three matches decided by just four games. This time it was Hopkins that took the 2-1 lead and two of the matches were not as close. Juniors Mike Buxbaum and Jeremy Dubin grabbed the first point of the match with an 8-4 win at first over Vayum Arora and Daniel Levine, the second-ranked doubles team in the region. Sophomore David Perez and freshman Scott Thygesen then won by the same score at third, beating Abhishek Alla and Yuvraj Kumar. The Tartans prevented the sweep however when Jeffrey Chen and Kenny Zheng won a tight 9-8 (6) decision over senior Nicholas Garcia and junior Emerson Walsh at third.

That win swung the momentum over to the Tartans, who took the first point of singles and tied the match at 2-2. Arora did the honors for the home team, beating Thygesen 6-2, 6-4 at fifth. Hopkins regained the lead however when Dubin rallied to win at second. Levine took the first set 6-1, but Dubin took the second, 6-4, to force a deciding set. He won that set, 6-3, to give Hopkins a 3-2 lead. Kumar answered for the Tartans however, beating sophomore Justin Kang 6-4, 6-4 at sixth, to make it a 3-3 match.

Garcia put Hopkins back on top with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Chaz Downing at third – avenging his three-set loss back in April. As he did in the previous two matches, it would be Buxbaum that clinched the win for the Blue Jays. The number one singles spot was a matchup of two of the top singles players in the region and the nation in Buxbaum and Alla. They have met six times in their career, including three times this year, with Buxbaum leading 4-2. He took the first set in this one, 6-4, and then took the second in a tiebreak, 7-6 (7), to send the Blue Jays to the quarterfinals.

Hopkins will take on the winner of MIT and fourth-ranked Bowdoin in the NCAA Quarterfinals on Monday, May 23. The quarterfinals, semifinals and finals will take place at Stowe Stadium in Kalamazoo, MI.