Flushing, NY - The #2 seeded men's tennis team handily defeated the #3 Dolphins of the College of Staten Island by a score of 6-0 in the semifinal round of the 2018 CUNYAC/HSS Men's Tennis Championship Tournament. The win advances the Hawks (9-2) to the finals where they will square off against top seeded Baruch College for the fifth straight time.

A convincing 8-1 top-flight doubles victory from Nasser Ghaffar and Florimond Le Goupil-Maier put hunter on the winning track. The duo of freshman Sean Kemp and sophomore Joel Cantila followed with an 8-3 win against CSI's Andrew Adia and Alex Tsui at the number two doubles shortly after. The third-doubles match was the most tightly-contested, but the Hawks came away with a clean sweep. Senior Filip Koritysskiy and freshman Omer Khalifa battled to an 8-7 (8-6) victory over David Luo and Tao Lin.

Ghaffar won by identical 6-2, 6-2 counts against Raymond Hwang at top flight singles while Le Goupil-Maier lost just three games in a 6-1, 6-2 outing, besting of Adia at the number three singles position. Cantila posted a 6-4, 6-2 straight-set win versus Luo at the No. 4 flight.

"The priority was doubles and we wanted to make sure that we would get three doubles wins before we went to singles," said Le Goupil-Maier about the team's expectations entering the match.

Ghaffar added similar remarks: "It's just about coming out real strong in doubles, and then in singles. Even if it's tight at the beginning, we can close out and take it from there. Once we had that advantage like we did today, we thought we could come out on top."

With a trip to the NCAA Division III Championship on the line, Baruch and Hunter will meet for the CUNYAC Championship on Thursday, May 3 at 3 p.m. at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing.

~Portions of this release courtesy of CUNYAC Athletic Communications.