SOUTH HADLEY, MA- The Wheaton College women's tennis team saw a quest to reach its first league tournament title match since 1991 end on Sunday, as the third-seeded Lyons fell to number-two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 5-2 during the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Tournament semifinals at Mount Holyoke College's tennis courts.

Wheaton slid to 11-3, while the Engineers, the five-time defending league tournament runner-up, are 8-2 and face top-seeded Wellesley College in this afternoon's final.

The Lyons trailed by a 2-1 margin after doubles, taking a doubles point from MIT for the second time in as many meetings this year. Sophomores Sarah Geocaris (Newport Beach, CA/Sage Hill School) and Catherine Teague (Manchester, NH/Central) avenged the only loss they had suffered in their first 12 dual matches this fall, a 9-7 setback on October 14, by downing Engineer junior Leslie Hansen (Fairfax, VA/Thomas Jefferson Science and Technology) and freshman Anastasia Vishnevetsky (Orange, CT/Hopkins School), 8-6 in the top slot.

In singles action, freshman Allesandra DiOrio (Cumberland, RI/Lincoln School) downed sophomore Melissa Diskin (Newport News, VA/Warwick) in the third position for the second time this season, 6-3, 6-1, but three of DiOrio's teammates lost in straight sets in allowing MIT to clinch the match.

During one of two unfinished matches, Geocaris took the first set in the top slot from Hansen, the eighth-ranked player in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's (ITA) national poll, by a 6-1 count, and the players stood tied at six in the second set. It marked just the second time in a dual match this season that Hansen was held to fewer than two games in a single set, with the prior occasion occurring against the nation's 15th-ranked player.

Wheaton is off until beginning the spring portion of its schedule with a four-match swing to Hilton Head, South Carolina, in March. The Lyons kick the trip off by facing Brevard College on Sunday, March 8, at 11:30 a.m.