LAKELAND, Fla. – The 13th-ranked Embry-Riddle men's tennis team gave top-ranked Saint Leo one of its toughest matches of the year in the semifinals of the Sunshine State Conference tournament on Saturday. Seeded fourth in the six-team tournament, the Eagles fell to the top-seeded Lions 4-2 in a match that could easily have gone the other way.
 
Doubles play began with a 6-3 win for the Lions at the top position as 29th-ranked Luis Iriarte and Martin Soukal topped 24th-ranked Michele Iftimie and Joshua Nuyts. The 27th-ranked Embry-Riddle duo of Fernando Alonso and Caelan Potts evened things up with their 7-5 win over Nicolas Bacella and Ghalil Mensour on court two. The deciding third flight match needed a tiebreaker to determine the outcome. The ERAU pair of Alvaro Diaz Rodrigo and Safar Rasulov had match point, but in the end, Eduardo Cohen and Kodai Kato managed to take the match 7-6 (10-8) to give the Lions a 1-0 lead.
 
Saint Leo went up 2-0 after Iriarte downed Potts 6-1, 6-2 at No. 5 singles. Diaz Rodrigo got a point back by way of a 6-2, 6-3 defeat of Kato on court six.
 
After Mensour got the better of a three-set battle against Ifitmie (6-0, 4-6, 6-2) on court three, Alonso pulled out a three-set victory of his own, rallying for a 2-6, 7-5, 6-2 win over Dylan Andrianaly to make it 3-2 in favor of the Lions.
 
The last two singles matches also went to three sets, including a hard-fought duel between Rasulov and second-ranked Soukal that saw the Eagles' top flight player bounce back from a 6-2 loss in set one to take set two 7-6 (11-9). In the end, it was Bacella who was able to hold off Nuyts (5-7, 6-1, 6-4) to clinch the victory.
 
The Eagles have one more match in the SSC tournament as they will face fifth-ranked Rollins in the third-place match at 1 p.m. on Sunday.