Last weekend was a tale of two teams at the Pine Ridge Racquet Club in Fort Wayne, Ind.

Eastern men’s and women’s tennis teams played at different levels. The men swept their competition 3-0 while the women struggled to a 1-3 finish.

Those three wins by the men matched their total number of wins from last season.

The Panthers were joined by Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne, St. Francis (Pa.), and Lipscomb. The women squeezed in another match on Saturday versus Detroit-Mercy.

Before the weekend head coach John Blackburn said that, based on his scouting, Lipscomb would be just as difficult an opponent as the Marquette squad that beat the men on Feb. 4.

Either Blackburn was wrong or Eastern came out on fire as the Panthers beat Lipscomb 6-1. The Bison only managed one singles win against Eastern and that was at the No. 6 spot.

The Eastern men dominated singles competition at the top throughout the weekend. Chuck LeVaque, Vuk Milicevic and Brandon Lenfert combined to sweep the No. 1 through No. 3 singles spots against all three schools.

LeVaque and Lenfert combined to form a formidable and successful doubles team, winning all three of their matches.

“All of the guys really played really well,” Blackburn said. “But Brandon really stood out to me. He was just outstanding all weekend. Chuck played very well too, but Brandon was impressive.”

The men swept the competition even without two of their usual competitors at singles. Chris Thomas and Ryan Blankenbaker were limited to doubles matches because of knee injuries sustained at Marquette.

“I wanted to keep Chris and Ryan in doubles because doubles matches are shorter and require less lateral movement,” Blackburn said. “We needed them for doubles at least and they performed well.

“They are both making progress and should be back to singles soon.”

The women started their weekend by taking on IPFW. Due to the amount of matches taking place on the seven-court racquet cub, singles matches were played first.

The Panthers lost 4-2 in the singles and because only one point is awarded for the doubles competition, it was not played.

The women lost again the next morning against Detroit-Mercy, 5-2. Blackburn felt a change needed to be made and he decided to split up the undefeated No. 1 doubles team of Sandra Sasidharan and Madina Mambetova.

Against Lipscomb on Saturday night, Mambetova was paired at the No. 1 with Jill Wirtz and Sasidharan’s new partner was Stephanie Harmazy.

“I just felt we needed to change things up.” Blackburn said. “All our singles assignments were good but we needed to mix up our personnel for doubles.”

The change in partners did not get Eastern a win against Lipscomb, but the Panthers would break out of their rut in a big way versus St. Francis. The women copied the men and beat St. Francis 7-0.

The men take on Northern Illinois this Friday, while the women have nearly two weeks off before getting back on the courts against North Dakota State and Northern Iowa on Feb. 24 and 25.