AZUSA, Calif. – The No. 19 Hawai'i Pacific University men's tennis team long mainland road trip got a bit longer as No. 6 Azusa Pacific routed the Sharks 8-1 at the M&B Tennis Center on Friday afternoon.
 
The Sharks (0-5) avoided the sweep by the Cougars (11-0) with a win at No. 6 singles – the final point of the match.
 
The Cougars made quick work of doubles action, with the top ranked duo in the country in APU's Oliver Frank and Christian Schmid beating HPU's 20th ranked duo of Maxime Gayte and Benjamin Loccisano 8-3 at No. 1. APU's 10th ranked squad of Tony Pejic and Jakob Schnaitter downed Gerardo Irrarrazabal and Jack Lyttle 8-1 at No. 2 and the Cougars Ryan Nuno and Jesse Haas got by HPU's Juan Erro and Adrian Elduque 8-2.
 
The highlight for the Sharks in singles came at No. 6, where Elduque came back from being down 1-6 in the first set to Robert Luconi, to winning the second set 6-4 and the tiebreaking set 10-7 for HPU's only point of the match.
 
The Sharks battled at No. 2 singles as Gayte took the second set to a tiebreaker before falling to ninth ranked Schmid 6-4, 7-6 (7-5).
 
At No. 1, second ranked Frank rolled through HPU's 27th ranked Loccisano 6-1, 6-1, while 26th ranked Schnaitter clobbered 46th ranked Irrarrazabal 6-1, 6-0 at No. 3. The Cougars took No. 4 singles with Ronald Kang beating Lyttle 7-6, 6-4, and at No. 5 where Nuno defeated Erro 6-2, 6-3.
 
The Sharks continue the mainland trip as they travel to Las Vegas to meet four nationally ranked opponents starting with No. 14 Rollins on Sunday at 11 a.m. HST (2 p.m. PDT) at the Darling Tennis Center.