WHEELING, W.Va. - The West Liberty University men's tennis team hosted West Virginia State Saturday evening at the Wheeling Park Bubble for its conference and home opener. The Hilltoppers rolled past the Yellow Jackets, 6-1, to improve to 3-0 on the season.

After an opening match loss in a tiebreak at the No. 1 doubles position, West Liberty locked in and took doubles #2 and #3 to earn the doubles point and go up 1-0 heading into singles. Nevio Dux and Joao Benvenutti picked up a 6-4 win in the No. 2 position, while Moritz Erpel and Gianluca Gerndt dominated doubles No. 3, 6-1.

Erpel battled out a 6-3, 6-5 win in the top singles spot starting a string of four straight singles wins to clinch the match for WLU. Dux downed his opponent in the No. 2 spot by identical 6-2 scores. Gerndt edged out his combatant 7-5 in the opening set and rode the momentum to a sweep behind a 6-2 set-two victory. Benvenutti picked up the first shutout of the day in set two of his sweep in the No. 4 position (6-2, 6-0).

After the Yellow Jackets got on the board with a tie-break win in singles #5, Roberto Esquivel finished the day off with a double bagel (6-0, 6-0) in the last singles match.

West Liberty will be back in action next Saturday at Bloomsburg University.

Follow the Hilltoppers all season online at HilltopperSports.com and on Twitter (@WLU_MTennis | @WLathletics), Instagram (@wlu_mtennis | @wlu_athletics), and Facebook.