DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The Embry-Riddle men's tennis team dropped a top-20 battle on Monday as the 13th-ranked Eagles fell to19th-ranked Azusa Pacific 5-2 at the Crotty Tennis Complex. The rain-shortened match saw the Eagles move to 10-5 on the year, while the Cougars improve to 19-1 overall.
 
Trailing 4-1, ERAU's Juan Ortiz Couder and Lucas Bos won seven of the next eight games against Jakob Schnaitter and Tony Pajic to earn the Eagles' first point of the day. The match at No. 1 doubles was a battle between top-ranked Oliver Frank and Christian Schmid and No. 4 Rodolfo Arreygue and Andres Donayre. APU's Frank and Schmid jumped out to an early lead and withstood an ERAU surge to top Arreygue and Donayre 8-5 and tie the team score at 1-1.
 
The rubber match at No. 3 doubles saw the APU team of Jesse Haas and Ryan Nuno take an early lead over Deepak Vishavkarma and Mickael Faucher. Down 7-5, the ERAU tandem staved off two match points and recorded two holds and a break to go up 8-7. The Cougars answered with a hold of their own to knot things up at 8-8 and went on to win the tiebreaker 7-3 to give APU a 2-1 lead into doubles.
 
Schmid bested Vishavkarma 6-1, 6-3 on court two and No. 45 Schmaitter downed No. 33 Donayre at the third singles spot to extend the APU lead to 4-1. The clinching point came in the form of a three-setter that saw Ronald Kang rebound from a 6-2 loss in the first set to top Bos 6-2, 6-0 at the fourth position.
 
The Eagles got their only singles point at the top spot where 50^th-ranked Ortiz Couder upended fourth-ranked Frank in straight sets, 7-5, 6-4.
 
ERAU returns to Sunshine State Conference play on Thursday when the team travels to Lakeland for a 2 p.m. match against Florida Southern.