Cambridge, MA — Thanks to the nor’easter that wreaked havoc up and down the East Coast, many of today’s matches were rescheduled for late this afternoon and evening. After a relatively quiet morning, courts around the Boston area were jumping as the 2014 Men’s National Team Championships heated up.
A Division (Potter Cup): Rochester nearly pulled off a first-round upset over Yale. The two teams were tied 4-all going into the last match, but in the end Yale pulled away to claim a spot in the semifinals with a 5-4 win. F&M did succeed in upsetting St. Lawrence. The Diplomats surged out to a 4-0 lead and held off the Saints to advance to the semifinals. Top-seeded Harvard and defending champions Trinity both advanced earlier in the day. Harvard will play F&M, and Trinity will play Yale in the semifinals.
B Division (Hoehn Cup): The semifinal match-ups for the B Division are set. Navy had hopes of taking down Dartmouth in the first round; after all, the Midshipmen came within a match of defeating the Big Green during their regular season meeting. Dartmouth widened the gap this time around, taking the wind out of the Mids’ sails with a 6-3 win. In a rematch of the 2013 Hoehn Cup final, Western Ontario faced Williams. The outcome was the same as last year: a 7-2 win to Western. Drexel has made huge strides this season, but Columbia stopped the Dragons from advancing out of the first round with an 8-1 win. In the semis, Dartmouth will face Princeton, who advanced earlier in the day with a win over Bates, and Western and Columbia will face off.
C Division (Summers Cup): George Washington and Bowdoin have a history of dramatic matches at the Men’s National Team Championships, and today’s contest was no different. The Colonials narrowly held off the Polar Bears, 5-4. Brown advanced by a more comfortable 7-2 margin over Amherst, and Wesleyan defeated Colby. George Washington will face the winner of the Middlebury-Hamilton match in the semifinals, and Brown will play Wesleyan.
D Division (Conroy Cup): At stake in the D Division are the bragging rights for top club team in the nation. Stanford, the defending D champs and last season’s top club, is still in the running thanks to a 7-2 win over Johns Hopkins in the first round. The Cardinal will play Hobart in the semifinals. The Statesmen routed MIT 8-1 in the opening round. Conn College, the top seed in the division, had a first-round bye after UVA withdrew, and the Georgetown-Bucknell match was scheduled for late evening.
E Division: (Chaffee Cup): Northeastern proved why they are the top seed in the E Division by bouncing Haverford from the first round with an 8-1 win. The Huskies will play Tufts tomorrow in the semifinals; the Jumbos defeated Boston University this morning. Another Boston-area team found success on the first day: Boston College sent Colgate to the consolations with an 8-1 win. The Eagles will take on the winner of Denison-Lehigh tomorrow in the semifinals.
F Division (Serues Cup): With most of the teams in the F Division coming from far afield, the matches in the division were all scheduled for late in the day, with the exception of the Northwestern-Wash U match, which will go off tomorrow morning.
G Division (Hawthorn Cup): Most of the G Division matches were being played late this evening, but the one match that has been completed was a nail-biter. Fordham and Bryant were tied 3-all going into the final flight of matches. Harry Waterton’s four-game win at #1 and Dmytro Bashchynskyy’s five-game victory at #4 gave the Bulldogs the matches they needed to upset the top-seeded Rams.
H Division: H Division play begins Saturday.
