OWATONNA, Minn. – The St. Olaf College men's tennis team secured its first berth in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) Playoffs since 2015 despite a 5-4 loss to Macalester College on the final day of the regular season on Sunday at West Hills Tennis and Fitness Center.

St. Olaf (6-11, 4-5 MIAC), which was playing its third match in as many days, entered the day needing either a win over Macalester (8-10, 5-4 MIAC) or a victory by Carleton College over Saint John's University to claim a playoff spot and found its way into the postseason despite a 5-4 loss to the Scots. Macalester, which needed a victory to get into the six-team field, won two of the three doubles matches and earned a singles split to set up a rematch between the two teams in the quarterfinals of the MIAC Playoffs.

The Oles got the help they needed from their crosstown rivals, as Carleton defeated Saint John's by an 8-1 margin in a match that started roughly 90 minutes earlier in the afternoon. The playoff berth is the ninth for St. Olaf, which appeared in the field for eight seasons in a row from 2008-15. The Oles ended the regular season in a three-way tie for fifth place but claimed the final playof spot by virtue of their head-to-head wins over Bethel University and Saint John's.

St. Olaf and Macalester will turn around and face each other for the second time in four days in a 4:30 p.m. match at Hayden Courts in St. Paul on Wednesday, May 1. The match will be the first between the two programs in the MIAC Playoffs, with the winner earning a date with MIAC regular-season champion Gustavus Adolphus College.

The Scots cruised to an 8-2 victory at No. 2 doubles to put the first point on the board and followed with an 8-5 win at No. 3 doubles to go up 2-0. Sophomore Bogdan Vizoli and first year Marjan Veldic gave St. Olaf a point and some momentum heading into singles by winning a tiebreaker at No. 1 doubles by an 8-6 margin to improve to 5-4 in conference play.

Macalester grabbed straight-set wins at No. 3 and No. 6 singles to extend its lead to 4-1 before Vizoli and Veldic posted victories at the top-two spots to keep St. Olaf alive. Vizoli earned his team-leading 12th singles win – his fourth victory in his last five matches – via a 6-4, 6-2 win atop the lineup.

Veldic picked up his first win in a super tiebreaker this season by closing out a 6-3, 3-6, 1-0 (10-5) victory at No. 2 singles to run his winning streak to four. The first year had lost the first four super tiebreakers of his career.

With their lead cut to 4-3, the Scots sealed the win with a super-tiebreaker victory at No. 4 singles by Kevin Mortimer, who rallied from a set down for a 4-6, 6-4, 1-0 (10-6) win. Senior Max Loesch recovered from dropping a second-set tiebreaker to finish off a 6-4, 6-7 (4-7), 1-0 (10-7) victory at No. 5 singles in to account for the 5-4 margin.