The Eastern men’s tennis team struggled to match up with the Ball State Cardinals Saturday.

After a 7-0 loss to Indiana to open the season, Eastern scored its first point of the season, but fell short in a 6-1 loss to Ball State.

The Panthers fell to 0-2 on the year, while Ball State notched its first win, moving its record to 1-1.

After dropping all three matches to lose the double point, sophomore Freddie O’Brien got on the board at the No. 1 singles spot. O’Brien picked up a 6-3, 4-4 win over Ball State’s Nemanja Guzina.

With the win, O’Brien earned his third win overall this season, giving him the team lead, with a 3-7 overall record.

Even though O’Brien notched a point for Eastern, O’Brien opened the day playing with Senior Trent Reiman at No. 1 doubles as the pair lost, 6-4, to Guzina and Thibault De Negri.

Trent lost his No. 3 singles match to De Negri, 6-4, 6-0.

For Ball State, all five wins in singles matches were in straight sets. Freshman Logan Charbonneau lost in straight sets at No. 4 singles, but made it hard for Ball State’s Conner Anderson to secure a win, with Anderson pulling away with a 6-4, 6-4 victory.

While Charbonneau almost got his team a win, he was satisfied with his performance.

“Some things I liked about my match was finding solidarity in my backhand and being able to go on the offensive with it when I wanted, which I hadn’t quite had until I came to Eastern,” he said. “Another positive was finding ways to hurt (Anderson) with my serve without the power to blow 115 MPH serves by like a lot of players at this level have.”

In doubles competition for Ball State, freshman Chris Adams and junior Tom Carney, at the No. 3 doubles spot were the first doubles tandem off the court as they defeated Jared Woodson and Kaisei Kuroki by a score of 6-1.

Marko Guzina and Conner Andersen got the point at the No. 2 position, defeating Gage Kingsmith and Grant Reiman 6-2.

Even though the season just got underway, over the last two seasons, traveling on the road has not been all too kind for the Panthers.

Dating back to last season, and the two losses on the road this year, the Panthers are just 1-17 on the road. Something that is encouraging for Eastern is that it finished 4-2 at Darling Courts last season.

But playing at Darling Courts will not come for quite some time for Eastern, as its first home match is March 4 against Lindenwood.

Eastern will be away Friday for the third of 11 straight on the road games against Indianapolis-Purdue University-Indianapolis.

Vince Lovergine can be reached at 581-2812 or vplovergine@eiu.edu