The Hoyas are developing a tradition that they’d rather not continue: For the past three seasons, the men’s tennis team has finished last in the Big East tournament.

After rattling off eight consecutive wins to pull to .500 on the season, the Georgetown men’s tennis team will head into the Big East tournament below .500 and with a pair of losses.

After steamrolling opponent after opponent for the last month, Georgetown’s men’s tennis team hit its first roadblock.

The Hoyas were at James Madison University for the first leg of a tough road trip to close out the regular season, and they fell 4-3 to the Dukes yesterday. The loss snapped an eight- match winning streak and dropped the men to 10-11 on the season.

One month ago, the men’s tennis team came home from a dismal trip to Florida with its future looking bleak. The Hoyas were staring down a 2-10 record, the heart of their schedule and several teams with nationally ranked players.

In almost any college sport, championships are won by either being consistently better than your opponents or peaking at the right time. With the Big East tournament just around the corner, the Georgetown men’s tennis team is trying to follow the latter of the two paths.

With the Hoya women able to earn a non-conference win over the weekend, Big East competition still proved difficult for Georgetown as the men and women lost three matches by a combined score of 18-3 against conference foes.

Just after highly ranked Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer were upset in the Australian Open, the Hoyas looked for upsets of their own.

Facing tough competition on the road this weekend, the Hoya men came up empty to even out their record, while the women took one of three matches to open their spring campaign.