LOS ANGELES — The LMU men's tennis team lost to No. 28 Pepperdine 4-1 Saturday at the LMU Tennis Center in a West Coast Conference men's tennis match.

Pepperdine clinched a share of the WCC regular season title after the result. The Waves share the crown with Santa Clara and San Diego.

The Lions, ranked No. 52 nationally, entered the afternoon having won 16 of their first 20 matches but were unable to slow a Pepperdine squad ranked No. 28 in the country.
LMU grabbed the early momentum by claiming the doubles point. Pepperdine struck first on Court 1, where David Fix and Edward Winter handled Alex Padro and Max Wuelfing 6-2. The Lions answered on Court 3, where Emil Kindhult and Darius Tamaddon topped Aleksa Pisaric and Hugh Winter 6-4 to level things. Cesar Cruz and Kuba Hrynkiewicz then clinched the doubles point for LMU on Court 2, edging Maxi Homberg and Lasse Poertner in a tiebreak, 7-6 (7).

Pepperdine, however, quickly seized control in singles. Maxi Homberg won the first point for the Waves on Court 4, as Padro had to retire, and Hugh Winter followed on Court 6 with a 6-4, 6-1 victory over Tristan Messerli to push Pepperdine's lead to 3-1. David Fix then sealed the match on Court 5, defeating Hrynkiewicz 7-6, 6-3, giving the Waves the decisive fourth point.

With the outcome decided, Courts 1, 2 and 3 remained unfinished and LMU had been competing well on each. On Court 3, Kindhult had taken the opening set from Aleksa Pisaric 6-2 before dropping the second 3-6, with a decisive third set underway. On Court 2, Cruz split sets with Lasse Poertner, falling 3-6, then winning 6-2, and was battling in a third. At the top of the lineup on Court 1, Wuelfing and Edward Winter were knotted in a split-set battle, with Wuelfing having taken the first set 7-6 and Winter leading the second 3-2 when play was stopped.

The Lions locked into the four seed of the WCC Conference Tournament beginning on Thursday, April 23. The Lion's first round matchup will be decided after the final regular season matches take place on Sunday.