SURPRISE, Ariz. – The 13th ranked Hawai'i Pacific University men were knocked out of the championship bracket, falling to No. 12 Hawai'i Hilo 4-1 in the 2021 PacWest Conference Championships Semifinals on Friday afternoon at the Surprise Tennis and Racquet Complex.
 
The Sharks (4-4) lost the doubles point to the Vulcans (7-2) to start the day.
 
The Vulcans No. 3 duo of Alessio DeMichelis and Chun En Wu defeated HPU's Kilian Maitre and Ryohei Arai 6-4, with the No. 2 pair of Luca Checcia and Joshua Liu downing Felix Einig and Cheng-Chieh Wang 6-4. The top doubles position went unfinished with the Sharks Benjamin Loccisano and Marcel Hornung trailing the Vulcans Martin Soukal and Santiago Di Loreto 6-5.
 
In singles, the Sharks scored a point at No. 2 when Einig won 3-1 as DeMichelis retired to even the match at 1-1
 
The Vulcans responded with 33rd ranked Soukal winning at No. 1 over Loccisano 1-6, 6-2, 6-2, before Di Loreto beat Wang 6-4, 6-4 at No. 6. The match ended when Hornung fell in a long second set tiebreaker to Checcia 6-1, 7-6 (9-7).
 
In the unfinished positions, Maitre led at No. 3 over En Wu 6-4, 4-6, 2-1, and Arai was up in the second set at No. 5 to Liu 4-1 after dropping the first set 7-5.
 
The Sharks move into the third place match to face No. 14 Concordia Irvine. CUI lost to top seed and No. 7 Azusa Pacific 4-1 in the other semifinal. The third place match is set for 10 a.m. HST (1 p.m. MST) at the Surprise Tennis and Racquet Complex.