PASADENA, Calif. - The No. 19 Whitman College men's tennis team hoped to close their arduous four-match spring break road trip with a win but would be unable to do so, dropping a narrow 5-4 defeat at No. 29 CalTech on Saturday.

Coupled with a pair of conference games over the weekend, the match with the Beavers (7-3) was Whitman's sixth in eight days. As in many of their recent contests, the Blues dropped the opening two doubles matches but were able to stay in the hunt with a win. After losing on the No. 1 and No. 2 courts, the Blues team of Adam Rapoport and Rajul Chikkalingaiah topped their Beaver counterparts of Matthew Gonzalgo and Kevin Yu, 8-6.

The Blues would fall behind after coming up short on the first two results to come in. Daniel Foster lost at second singles to James Wei 6-3, 6-0 then, on the No. 4 court, Alex Hwang fell 6-0, 6-4 to Yu.

Whitman (5-10) had fallen behind 4-1 but were meanwhile looking at wins on several other courts. Rapaport won a second-set tiebreaker to earn a 6-4, 7-6 (0) sweep at the three, but before the Blues could gain any more ground CalTech got the match-clincher on the No. 1 court. Ben Kirsh fell 6-0, 7-5 to Varun Shanker to seal the win.

The Blues return to action at the end of the first week of April, resuming Northwest Conference play at Willamette on Saturday, Apr. 6 at 11:00 a.m.