The No. 21 men’s tennis team (15-3, 0-1) dropped its first conference match of the season 5-2 to No. 12 Wake Forest (13-1, 1-0) on Wednesday at home. Despite opening the match by winning the doubles point, the Wolfpack failed to carry the winning effort into singles play as every player lost in singles, with exception to senior William Noblitt.

According to senior Andre Iriarte, who won 8-2 in doubles with sophomore Christian Welte, the team was unable to translate the doubles play into singles points.

“It’s not like there was something that didn’t carry over, it’s just that these guys were out here to fire and they came out with a strong offense right from the start,” Iriarte said.

“We’ve been executing pretty solid doubles matches. As a team, we feel pretty confident in doubles, we’ve just got to take the same sort of assets in doubles and apply those in singles and just go out there and take it.”

Noblitt, who defeated Wake Forest junior Mariusz Adamski in three sets, said the match was closer than the final score suggested.

“In No. 5 and No. 6 we took the first set in both of those,” Noblitt said. “And [freshman] James [McGee], the No. 2, was coming back so it could have been the other way around, 5-2, easily.”

Coach Jon Choboy credited Wake Forest for responding after losing the doubles point. Wake Forest boasts the No. 7 player in the nation in senior Todd Paul.

“They’re a good team,” Choboy said. “That team really competed well. I definitely know that we’re better than what we were able to put together out there from start to finish. But they did a pretty good job against us too, so I’m not going to take anything away from those guys.”

Choboy said he would like to see his team improve in putting away matches when the opportunity presents itself, particularly after winning the first set.

“Being in these situations where we have set points, when we’re in the lead we could do a little bit better job,” Choboy said. “That can only come from experience, but that’s what we’ll get another opportunity to do on Friday. Friday will be another tough match.”

The Pack will face another highly touted opponent Friday in No. 3 Virginia. The match will be at 2 p.m. at the J.W. Isenhour Center. Choboy said from this point on, the team can expect tough matches from conference competitors who are loaded with talent.

“They’ve all been tough,” Choboy said. “And we’ve been fortunate to have been winning these and winning a lot of them. There isn’t going to be any matches different than that. It’s not like it goes up a whole lot, we’ve been playing pretty tough matches the last six or seven matches we’ve played.”