SMU senior Darron Walsh returns a volley during doubles play against the UC—Santa Barbara Sunday afternoon at Turpin tennis stadium. (SPENCER EGGERS/The Daily Campus)

The SMU Men’s tennis team sent UC – Santa Barbara back to California with a loss on Sunday after its last home match of the season.

The Mustangs opened the match with a loss from their No. 1 doubles duo, sophomore Tobias Flood and junior Joseph Hattrup.

No. 2 doubles Adham el-Effendi and Robert Lammberth then responded with a win in convincing fashion.

The Mustangs took the doubles point after the No. 3 doubles team of Gaston Cuadranti and Darren Walsh won their match to put SMU up 1-0 for the afternoon and ahead going into singles play.

At the conclusion of doubles play, UC—Santa Barbara knew it needed to take four of the six singles matches to win. Santa Barbara players challenged SMU but came up short when they could only close out three of the six matches.

Both Gaston Cuadranti and David Costa dropped their matches, allowing Santa Barbara to take two wins early on.

After an injury from SMU junior Robert Sajovich led to a default loss for the Mustangs, Santa Barbara looked as if it could comeback to take the overall victory.

However, Tobias Flood came back from his doubles loss to win his singles match.

Adham el-Effrendi stayed consistent through the afternoon by following his doubles win with a crucial singles victory.

Freshman Mischa Nowicki sealed the victory for SMU with a win in his No. 4 position.

The Mustangs clinched the victory by taking four of the seven possible points to finalize the afternoon 4-3.

The win was SMU’s 16th of the year and moved them to an impressive 16-6 record for the year.

The season winds down with matches against cross-town rival TCU on Wednesday and then Rice in Houston this weekend. After these matches, the regular season will be over, and will be followed by the C-USA Championships in Tulsa, Okla. at the end of April.