The Highlanders absorbed an injury during doubles play and recovered to split three of six singles matches vs. UC Irvine at SRC Tennis Courts, where the Anteaters took an early lead and held on and defeat UC Riverside, 4-3, Thursday afternoon.
 
"I'm very pleased with my team - a huge improvement from a couple of weeks ago," said Highlanders head coach Mattias Johansson. "If we keep it going on this direction, some teams may be surprised when conference tournament comes around."
 
After getting blanked in doubles – as the Blando brothers, Jayson and Michael, lost to Matthew Sah and Jeremy Merville, 1-6, Gilbert Chung and Joshua Roth lost to Bjorn Hoffmann and Mateusz Smolicki, 3-6, and Nolan McCaig and Antreas Djakouris went down to Bruce Man-Son-Hing and Mark Peneff, 3-6 – Djakouris was forced to opt out of his scheduled singles match on Court 2 due to injury.
 
The Highlanders recovered nicely, as McCaig finished first on Court 3 with a 7-5 3-0 victory over Merville, who defaulted in the fourth game of the second set. Then, after Gilbert Chung battled to close defeat on Court 1, UC Riverside closed the day on two wins by Joshua Roth, 6-4 0-6 6-4 over Sah, and Jayson Blando, 6-3 3-6 7-6 over Peneff, pointing the program in a very positive direction as the regular season continues into its second half.
 
"It was a very solid performance from the guys," coach Johansson continued. "Antreas got injured after doubles and sat out singles, and guys really stepped up. It looked very interesting for a while when Gilbert [Chung] had set point at No. 1 and us being up on Courts 3, 4 and 5."
 
In other singles results on Thursday, Michael Blando was defeated by Mike Mkrtchia, 1-6 2-6, and Bingru Chen lost to Smolicki, 1-6 3-6.
 
Next up, the Highlanders host Claremont Mudd Scripps Saturday at 4 p.m. PT on SRC Tennis Courts. Looking ahead, UC Riverside will take another nonconference matchup on the road at Grand Canyon Tuesday, April 13, before reeling off four straight conference clashes leading into the Big West Conference Championship, which takes place April 29-May 2, hosted by UC Irvine.