SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - With all eyes on him, Jesse Knight clinched the fifth and final point in a Cal Lutheran men's tennis upset of NAIA No. 9 Westmont this afternoon on the road.

The Kingsmen took a 2-1 lead after the doubles portion of the match with Moises Cardenas and Fergus Scott earning the first team point of the day with an 8-4 victory over Carl Lindquist and Travis Kimsey at No. 1 before the No. 3 pair of Andrew Slater and Ian Slater played Luke Wahlen and Tommy Nightingale to a tiebreaker 9-8 (5) win at No. 3 to give CLU an early cushion.

Once play shifted to singles, Gio Valdez came up with a 6-3, 6-1 win over Kimsey at No. 5 and Cardenas downed Wahlen 6-2, 6-3 on the No. 1 court.

After Westmont stole wins on courts two, three and four, the focus shifted to No. 6 Knight and Nightingale. The first set was won by Nightingale and Knight came back with an equalizing point. Knight then took the tiebreaker to win 1-6, 6-2, 7-5, putting the match in the books for the Kingsmen.

In a post-match interview Knight shared, "After I dropped that first set, I had to change up my tactics," he went on, "I went from the baseline and only went in when I had the perfect opportunity and I won the second set 6-2."

Despite fatigue in the third set, having appeared in both doubles and singles today, Knight played a couple baseline rally shots before charging the net as hard as he could to hopefully finish off the point, which he successfully did, and he ended up winning.

Cal Lutheran (2-1) returns to the Poulson Tennis Center for another non-conference match on Wednesday, Feb. 18 when the Kingsmen host Brandeis (Mass.) at 2:00 p.m.

Results: CLU 5, WEST 4
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