WALLA WALLA, Wash.  The 13th-ranked Whitman men's tennis team went in different directions for matches heading into the weekend. The squad that headed further Northwest swept a rare doubleheader at the University of Puget Sound by identical 8-1 scores, while the squad that traveled down into Texas was felled, 5-4, by No. 15 Trinity (Texas) University in a match played at the University of Texas-Tyler.

The wins at UPS were conference victories and kept the Blues' league record unblemished at 9-0, while the combination of the day's results moved Whitman's overall mark to 18-6.

The Texas match kicked off the day, as the two teams squared off at UT-Tyler's Summers Tennis Center.

Trinity's Tigers roared out of the gate to earn the first two points of the morning, taking a 2-0 lead with wins at the Nos. 1 and 2 spots before Trevor Fennessy and Gary Ho would score one for the good guys, picking up a 9-7 win at 3-doubles.

Ho was the first to finish in singles action where he won in straight sets, 7-5 and 6-2, at No. 5 to even the match totals.

The Tigers took the next three points, though, to earn the clinching fifth point of the match.

As so often happens, that fifth point was a battle. A lengthy three-setter between Whitman's Robert Carter and Trinity's Liam Crawley.

Carter fell behind with a first-set loss, 6-3, but fought through a set tiebreaker in the second, 7-6, to force a third. The two opponents jousted back and forth for nearly the entire third set, until Crawley would finally scratch out a 7-5 win to clinch the match for his teammates.

Both Zach Hewlin at 1-singles and Daniel Foster at No. 6 won for Whitman, but the two points came after the match score had been decided.

In Tacoma, Washington, the Northwest portion of the squad was busy pounding away at Puget Sound in the UPS Tennis Pavilion.

The 10 a.m. match mirrored the 1 p.m. match as the doubles pairings of Alex Hwang and Adam Rapoport at No. 1, Rajul Chikkalingaiah and Luke Targett at 2, and Jacob Christensen and Joey Diaz at No. 3 went undefeated, both times lifting Whitman to 3-0 leads heading into the singles matches.

Chikkalingaiah won both of his 2-singles matches on the day; Hwang picked up a win at No. 3 in the morning and at No. 1 in the afternoon; Targett won at 4 in the early match and at No. 3 in the second outing; and Diaz won at Nos. 6 then 5.

Adam Rapoport earned a 1-singles win in the morning and Azur Ali won at No. 6 in the afternoon.

The split-squad weekend continues on Sunday as the Texas group takes on host and 17th-ranked UT-Tyler at 7 a.m. PT, and the closer-to-home group travels to Pacific Lutheran University for a conference match that begins at 10 a.m.