Davis Elkins

This Week's Outlook: The College of Wooster men's tennis team, listed as the seventh seed in the 2017 North Coast Athletic Conference Tournament, squares off against second-seeded Kenyon College at noon on Friday, April 28 at Granville, Ohio in the quarterfinal round.

Media Coverage: Fans can follow Wooster's quarterfinal match as well as subsequent results through the NCAC's Championship Central web page. Fans can also follow the team's Twitter account, @wooster10s, for updates.

A Look-Back at Last Week: The Scots come into the tournament on a 0-2 skid after dropping decisions to Wabash College and John Carroll University, both of which sport regional rankings in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's Central Region poll. In the regular-season finale against John Carroll, two three-setter singles matches swung in the opponent's favor as part of a 3-6 setback. On the winning side, however, was junior Titas Bera as he took down the 13th-ranked singles player in the region, Jad Abdul-Aal, in straight sets, 6-4, 7-5. Additionally, first-year Nathan Devereux proved victorious by the same score, 6-4, 7-5 at No. 5 singles. In doubles action, Bera and partner Jesse DeWitt prevailed 8-5 at No. 2

Game, Set, Historic Careers: This season, seniors Jack Buchan and Davis Elkins eclipsed W Association Hall of Famer and current Board of Trustee Bob Savitt and partner John Morlidge as the winningest doubles pair in program history with 44 career wins together, four more than the previous record set in 1984. Suitable for the upcoming match, one of those 44 wins came against Kenyon's No. 1 team last season, the same pair which went on to win the NCAA Div. III men's doubles title later that spring.

Individually, Elkins ranks in the top five all-time in career doubles wins with 59, followed by Buchan's 56, which stands tied for the sixth-most in program history.

Play Like It's 1999:  Wooster's last win over the Lords dates back to the 1999 season when the Scots topped Kenyon 4-3 in the Great Lakes Colleges Association Tournament, with doubles counting as one point. That year, Wooster finished 18-5 on the season and third in the NCAC Tournament. 

Two is Better than One: For the Scots, it starts with doubles. All seven of their wins have come when Wooster takes at least two doubles points. However, the Black and Gold took a 2-1 lead over the 24th-ranked Lords in their mid-April match-up before falling 6-3. Buchan and Elkins won 8-6 at No. 1 while Bera and DeWitt prevailed 8-5 at No. 2. In singles, Kenyon's depth proved too much. Bera logged the lone win in a three-set, comeback thriller at No. 1, winning 2-6, 6-4, 1-0 (5) while each of the remaining singles flights lost in straight sets. Worth noting, three points marked the most the Scots have won on Kenyon since a 4-3 loss to the Lords in 2004.

Un-Bera-ble for Opponents:  In Wooster's seven wins, Bera is 5-1 at No. 1 singles and, along with partner DeWitt, 5-0 at No. 2 doubles, while boasting an 18-9 overall singles record, including identical 3-1 singles and doubles records in conference play and a 3-3 clip against regionally-ranked opponents. Kenyon arrives as the sixth-ranked team in the Central Region but does not sport a regionally-ranked singles player or doubles pair, while Bera comes in as the 15th-ranked singles player in the region. Regardless, Bera always plays his opponent close, as four of the junior's eight dual match losses have come in third set tiebreakers. In addition, the junior is one win away from tallying his 50th career singles win.