The men’s tennis team earned their first Ohio Valley Conference win with a 4-3 victory Friday afternoon against the Eagles of Morehead State.

After losing the doubles point the Panthers rallied to take four of the six singles matches and earn their first conference win.

The men (7-7, 1-3 OVC) could not use their momentum from Friday to win their second OVC match, losing 5-2 at Eastern Kentucky on Saturday.

Freshman Jordan Nestrud had another strong weekend, winning both of his singles and doubles matches. His 6-0, 6-0 win at No. 6 singles against Morehead’s Martin Dorcich clinched Friday’s victory for the Panthers.

Head coach John Blackburn thinks Nestrud put everything together this weekend.

“Jordan played very confident tennis, very tactically sound,” Blackburn said. “He was focused and played extremely well when the pressure was on him and the match was down to the wire.”

Nestrud also had the only singles win for either the men or the women at the Martin Hall Tennis Courts of EKU, beating the Colonels Billy Pfaffinger in straight sets, 6-1, 6-2.

Nestrud and fellow freshman Vuk Milicevic formed a strong tandem at No. 3 doubles, winning both of their matches this weekend. The duo took both of their doubles matches with 8-3 victories.

Nestrud’s singles win and doubles victory gave the Panthers both of their points in the 5-2 loss.

The Eastern women did not have quite the weekend the men did. The women’s team lost 4-3 at Morehead on Friday. The Panthers were then swept 7-0 by EKU on Saturday. The women did not win a single set in singles action against the Colonels, losing all six matches in straight sets.

The only win of the match came at No. 1 doubles with a 9-7 victory by the pair of junior Madina Mambetova and senior Jill Wirtz.

The day before at Morehead the women performed better but still could not get enough wins at the bottom levels of singles play, a problem that has been plaguing them all season.

Sophomore Sandra Sasidharan won at No. 1 singles 6-3, 7-5, and Mambetova won at No. 2 singles in the toughest match-up of the weekend against Eagles freshman Fernanda Chiaparini (3-6, 6-1, 10-8).

In the final four singles matches, however, the Panther women could only get one more victory.

Wirtz won at No. 4 singles 8-2 in a match that was cut short due to time constraints and because Morehead had already clinched the victory with four points.

Despite the losses by the women, Blackburn thinks his depth will improve.

“I don’t think our depth is a big problem,” he said. “Some of our girls are just now starting intensive training and I have been very proud of how rapidly Cristina (Carillo) and Sam (Lininger) are improving.”

The women (3-11, 0-4) will get a chance to break their conference futility against Austin Peay Tuesday afternoon.

The Panthers will play their third of five home matches when the Governors and Lady Governors come to Eastern for a 2:30 match-up at the Darling Courts. The Austin Peay men and women are both coming off losses to Tennessee Tech.