Duke may have left the ITA Mideast Regionals a day early, but the Blue Devils were still satisfied.
Nine men represented Duke in the five-day tournament, which began Wednesday at the Sheffield Indoor Tennis Stadium and North Carolina's Cone-Kenfield Tennis Center. Duke's bid ended Saturday at UNC after the remaining five players were defeated.
"Overall, it was definitely a good week for us," assistant coach Ramsey Smith said. "For most of the guys on the team, it was their best tournament."
Smith said he was pleased with the performances of Duke's four doubles teams, despite a disappointing loss in the quarterfinals Saturday.
Senior Joey Atas and junior David Goulet struggled against Citadel's Daniel Dossetor and James Eason, falling 8-5.
"David and I are pretty disappointed about the last match," Atas said. "I guess we were a little bit nervous, and I was a little tired from my other matches. I felt like I could have done better."
Smith also had high praise for the two seniors on the team-Atas and Peter Rodrigues. Both fell in the quarterfinals Saturday.
"It was definitely nice to see our two seniors do well," Smith said. "They both played the best they have all fall at the tournament. I was really happy with how Peter competed, and Joey played awesome."
Pitted against a member of his own team, Atas defeated sophomore Kiril Dimitrov, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, before dropping to Old Dominion's Henrique Cancado in the singles quarterfinals, 6-1, 7-5. Rodrigues bested N.C. State's William Noblitt, 7-6, 6-2, but stumbled against 18th-ranked Harel Srugo of Old Dominion, 6-3, 3-6, 6-1.
The week was also exciting for freshman Dylan Arnould, ranked 111th in the nation, who fell to 15th-ranked Arnaud Lecloerec of Virginia Commonwealth, 7-6, 6-4, in an intense fourth round of singles action.
"The whole match was really high-level tennis," Smith said. "Lecloerec came up and played the big points a little bit better than Dylan did. They were just neck-and-neck the whole time-Dylan's got a huge game."
Arnould said he was let down by the loss.
"I just thought that I had a lot of opportunities in that last match but let things slip a bit," Arnould said. "I served the first set and ended up getting broken. If I had taken care of serves better things may have turned out differently."
Freshman Aaron Carpenter also tucked several wins under his belt, besting Clemson's Jarmaine Jenkins, 2-6, 6-4, 6-2, before dropping to Radford's Martin Sayer, 6-3, 6-2, in the third round of singles play.
His teammates, Carpenter and junior Alex Stone, outperformed Elon's Damon Gooch and Mason Schermerhorn, 8-5, before falling to Virginia's Treat Huey and Lee Singer, 8-4, in doubles action.
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