Box Score During a six-hour ride to Baltimore in preparation for their first match in the 2017 NCAA Division III Tournament, members of the John Carroll men's tennis team stumbled across a division3tennis.com preview of the Wesleyan region.

Written by a blogger identified as "D3 Northeast", the preview stated that Wesleyan was given a 54% chance to advance to the national quarterfinals, Johns Hopkins 42%, and Christopher Newport 3%.

The other three teams in the regional -- John Carroll, Goucher and Franciscan -- were lumped together and were all given less than a 1% chance to advance.

While not meant to be harsh, the preview did outline the uphill battle the three-time Ohio Athletic Conference champions would face.

For at least one round, one of the "less than one percent chance" teams had an opportunity to at least advance to the second round as John Carroll and Goucher faced each other in a first round match-up Friday afternoon. Using a closing burst to win all three doubles matches, the Blue Streaks ultimately prevailed over the Gophers, 5-1, in a contest staged at the Hopkins Tennis Complex on the campus of Johns Hopkins University.

Box Score

All three doubles matches were tight early. The first to pull away was the #2 team of Gustavo Garcia and Dillon O'Brien, who rolled out to a 7-2 lead before finishing off Midori Fujitani and Jack Hodges, 8-4

Jad Abdul-Aal and David Sinense were down 4-3 before winning five of the last six games for an 8-5 win at #1 doubles over Elliot Diehl and Michael Herman

It was then up to the #3 pairing of Tyler Cole and Nick Siciliano to complete the sweep, which they did by winning five of the final seven games to prevail over Josiah Meekins and Frankie Mullinix, 8-4

Fittingly, the two seniors in the line-up provided the final 1-2 punch to clinch the victory. Siciliano ended his #4 singles match 6-1 6-1 to put JCU on the doorstep. After Goucher claimed its lone point at #2 singles, Abdul-Aal closed out #1 singles with a 6-0 6-4 triumph -- the 141st of his career (72nd in singles).

John Carroll improves to 17-7 with the win, with the 17 victories tying the program record for most wins. The 2006 team -- which also won the OAC regular season and tournament title -- captured 17 victories that year.

While this year's John Carroll team and their new friends in the blogosphere have enjoyed good fun with their back-and-forth exchanges (another blogger, d3AtlanticSouth, proclaiming after today's win that he was "on the John Carroll Tennis Bandwagon"), JCU head coach Shaun Keenan knows his team will face a mighty challenge in the second round. The Blue Streaks will face #5 ranked Wesleyan (CT) at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday.

"They are very good across the board," said Keenan of JCU's next opponent. "This was a good win for us today ... any win in the NCAA tournament is a great win and it means a lot to our program. Hopefully we take some momentum into the next match. But we will need to be at our best for sure."