No. 6 Knights Get Big Wins Over Two Top-10 Teams

San Diego City, ranked No. 6 in Southern California, earned two big victories this week, including a narrow 5-4 win over No. 10 Mt. San Antonio to stay undefeated in conference and an 8-1 home win over No. 7 Fullerton on Friday.

With these two important wins, the Knights improved to 8-3 overall and 5-0 in the Inland Empire Athletic Conference.

In Thursday's match against Mt. San Antonio, the Knights got off to a great start by taking two of the three doubles matches. Brothers Hunter and Thomas Lynch got past Mt. SAC's Luke Jensen and Jack Swisher, 8-5, in No. 1 spot, while Abel Martinez and Julian Mackinnon took No. 2 doubles, 8-4, over Zayniddin Khusainov and Jarred Millan.

In No. 1 singles play, City's Abel Martinez forced a third set tiebreaker, but fell to Jensen 5-7, 6-3, 4-10.

The Knights, however earned wins in the No. 2, 3, and 4 singles matches to clinch the team victory. Mackinnon only dropped one game in his 6-1, 6-0 win over Millan in the No. 2 spot.

In the No. 3 match, Hunter Lynch blanked Khusainov 6-0, 6-0, and Bernardo Martinez earned a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Aidan Lopez in No. 4 singles. 

The Knights carried over the momentum of Thursday's conference win into Friday's non-conference contest against Fullerton. They swept all three doubles matches and won five of the six singles matches to get their third victory over a top-10 opponent.

The Lynch brothers defeated Fullerton's Sebastian Koster and Felix Jayamaha, 8-3, in No. 1 doubles. City's No. 2 team, Abel Martinez and Julian Mackinnon, earned an 8-6 win over David Gutierrez and Michael Lumang, while Bernardo Martinez and Yared Gezahegne got past the No. 3 Fullerton team of Matthew Doria and Joseph Chatters.

Hunter Lynch defeated Koster in a third set tie-break 3-6, 6-1, 10-3 in No. 1 singles.

Abel Martinez got 6-2, 7-6 (6) win over Fullerton's Gutierrez in the No. 2 spot, while Mackinnon beat Lumang 6-3, 7-5 in No. 3 singles.

No. 4 Thomas Lynch defeated Felix Jayamaha 6-4, 6-3, and Bernardo Martinez won his No. 5 match 6-3, 6-2 over Matthew Doria. 

The Knights are off to their best start after 11 matches since 2023 when they also jumped out to an 8-3 record. 

They will resume conference play on Wednesday, March 19 against Imperial Valley at 2 p.m. The Knights previously defeated them, 9-0, on February 18 and have a 16-match win streak over IVC. City's last loss to them was on March 27, 2014.