AMHERST — Nathan Ji won his third singles match to clinch the Amherst Regional boys tennis team’s 3-2 victory over Pittsfield, Thursday in the Western Massachusetts Division 1 Tournament.

Eighth-seeded Amherst (8-7) will play at No. 1 Longmeadow (14-2), Saturday at 4 p.m. in the quarterfinal round.

No. 9 Pittsfield finished 5-5.

“Going up against Longmeadow is obviously going to be a hard match,” Ji said. “I’m just hoping we can play our best and do the best we can.”

Austin Xiong won his second singles match for the Hurricanes 6-1, 6-1 over Brian Lavinio.

Ethan Yu and Andrew Ni won the first doubles match 6-2, 6-1 over Noah Beckwith and Dave Charland.

Patrick O’Connell, Amherst’s only senior, lost 6-1, 6-2 to Evan Dempsey at first singles.

O’Connell described Longmeadow as “historic rivals.” He added that he “thinks we have a chance this year, if we play our game right.”

Patrick Cooper and Joey Green dropped their second doubles match to Tom Rindfuss and Liam Fitzgibbons, 6-4, 7-5.

O’Connell and Ji, who is a junior, are the team’s lone upperclassmen. Amherst will need its young players to play well against Longmeadow.

“I think they’ve improved a lot, I think it’s still a work in progress,” Amherst coach Jeremy Wise said of his underclassmen.

O’Connell said the team is progressing.

“I know early in the season we had some problems with doubles,” O’Connell said. “We had to switch it up a lot and make sure people were playing with the right partners, but at this point I think we’re starting to figure things out and it’s starting to click.”

Ji said that the team’s attitude toward each other has changed since last year.

“I feel like we’ve become much more focused and serious in practice,” Ji said. “During matches we’re much more supportive and we encourage each other more now.”

Amherst assistant coach Andy Zyskowski said that the youth on the team bodes well for the future.

“We’ve got a lot of underclassmen and some middle schoolers playing doubles,” Zyskowski said. “In the years to come they’ll start playing better and will be able to beat some of the top doubles teams in the area.”

O’Connell said that having Zyskowski, who graduated last year after playing three years at first singles, come back as an assistant coach is beneficial to a young team.

“There are skills that we built up with last year’s team and I think he helps to meld those in with our new group,” O’Connell said.