Box Score The Incarnate Word men's tennis team saw their eight-match win streak come to an end on Monday in a 4-2 loss to visiting Southern Mississippi. The Cardinals enter their first Southland Conference weekend of play with an 8-2 overall record.

Incarnate Word, fresh off a 5-2 win over Louisiana yesterday on the very same courts, started out strong by taking the doubles point. Both the second doubles team of Alexandre Chauvel and Alejandro Hernandez and the third doubles team of Augustin Salazar and Emilio Vila posted 6-2 wins to put the Cardinals up, 1-0, in the match.

UIW moved one match closer to victory as Hernandez made quick work of his opponent at first singles, winning 6-3, 6-0, to put the Cardinals up 2-0. But the rest of the lineup just found themselves on the wrong end of closely contested matches, where one point here and one point there made the difference between a ninth win in a row for UIW or their first loss in two months.

Vila surrendered a late break in the first set to lose it 7-5 but came back to win the second set of his second singles match to force the decisive third set. In the third, however, he would fall 6-4 as the Cardinals' lead was cut to 2-1.

That became 2-2 shortly after Vila walked off the court as UIW lost another three-set heartbreaker. Marcel Miralles, at third singles, took the first set in a tiebreaker, 7-6, but could not sustain the momentum and dropped the next two sets by scores of 3-6 and 2-6, to lose the match.

The final two decisions came at fourth and sixth singles as both Salazar and Ian Uraga would lose straight-set matches to send Southern Miss to victory. Both were in their respective matches the entire time, but fell just short of seizing control and keeping UIW alive. Salazar would lose his fourth singles match 4-6, 4-6, and Uraga would lose 6-7(6), 3-6 to bring an end to the match.

Incarnate Word will now travel east to Louisiana for its first two Southland Conference matches of the season this weekend. The Cardinals take on Nicholls on Saturday, March 21st at 2:00 p.m. before finishing the road trip at New Orleans on Monday, March 23rd at 1:00 p.m.