GREENEVILLE, Tenn. - The Newberry College men's tennis team took the first of their two weekend SAC matches by defeating the No. 36 Tusculum Pioneers, 5-4.

Felipe Sobrinho (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Jeremy Smith (Durban, South Africa) extended their doubles win streak to six matches by defeating Drew Kiser and Thomas Rees (8-6).

Newberry's most dominant doubles victory of the day came from Lucas Mattos (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Maxim Sukharev (Vilnius, Lithuania) who defeated Leo Guaycurus and Henrique Rodrigues (8-3). Mark Boswell (Piedmont, S.C.) and Pavle Popovic (Belgrade, Serbia) finished out the doubles matches by falling to Hunter Beal and Steven Lin (8-3).

Newberry received the wins they needed to clinch the team victory from Sukharev, Smith, and Sobrinho. Sukharev won his top flight match against Rees (6-4, 4-6, 7-5); Smith defeated Beal (6-1, 6-4); and Sobrinho clinched the match by taking down Guaycurus (6-1, 3-6, 7-6 (7-1)).

In other singles matches, Mattos dropped a match to Rodrigues (7-6 (7-4), 6-4); Popovic lost to Lin (6-1, 6-1); and Boswell fell to Kiser (6-4, 7-6).

Newberry, ranked 12th in the region, improve to 3-6 overall and 2-2 in the South Atlantic Conference. They will return to the court tomorrow in a road match against Carson-Newman at 11 am. Next up for Tusculum (9-7, 3-3 in the SAC) will be a match at Brevard tomorrow at 1 pm.