EVANSTON, Ill. -- The Western Michigan men's tennis team put up a fight and dropped a hard-fought match at No. 38 Northwestern, 5-2, on Sunday evening at the Combe Tennis Center.

The match saw four of the six singles matches go the full three sets and one of the doubles matches was decided in a tiebreaker between the Broncos (7-1) and Wildcats (5-3) in a match that lasted just under four hours.

Northwestern opened by taking the doubles point with 8-6 wins at No. 2 over Michael and Thomas Calderone and No. 3 over Casey Cullen and Pablo Olivarez. After upsetting the No. 55 team in the country on Friday, Zeyad Montasser and Kazuya Komada dropped the No. 1 doubles match in a tiebreaker, 9-8.

The Broncos fell behind further, 2-0, after dropping the match at No. 2 singles, but Michael Calderone came back and knocked off Sidarth Balaji 6-3, 7-5 at No. 1 singles to put the Broncos on the board, 2-1. Calderone is now 8-0 in dual matches and 6-0 at No. 1 singles this season.

Casey Cullen won the first set in a tiebreaker at No. 4 singles, while the Broncos lost the first set in the other three matches. WMU wouldn't go down without a fight as Pablo Olivarez won the second set at No. 3, 6-4, Brad Noel won the second set at No. 5 in a tiebreaker and Zeyad Montasser won 6-3 in the second set at No. 6.

WMU couldn't complete the comeback, however, as the Wildcats came on strong to clinch the match with wins at No. 6 and No. 5.

Cullen recovered from dropping the second set of his match to defeat Eric Spector 7-6, 3-6, 6-2 at No. 4 to account for the final score.

The Broncos wrap up their two-match homestand with a trip to East Lansing on Wednesday to play Michigan State (6-2) at 6 p.m.

#38 Northwestern 5, Western Michigan 2
Feb 07, 2010 at Evanston, Ill. (Combe Tennis Center)