Eagle Men’s Tennis Has Promising Weekend at ITA Southeast Regional

// TOURNAMENT RESULTS //

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Georgia Southern Men’s Tennis showed growth at the ITA Southeast Regional in Tallahassee. After taking just four players to the regionals a year ago, GSU qualified six players and three doubles teams for the tournament which was held at Florida State’s Scott Speicher Tennis Center this weekend.

“We did a great job of putting ourselves in a position to take control of match and we gave ourselves an opportunity to win every match we had this weekend,” said head coach Nick Zieziula. “What was disappointing for us this weekend was our inability to finish matches. We take a lot of positives out of this weekend, but what we need to work on is closing out matches once we get a lead. We don’t want to be simply close against nationally ranked teams; we want to beat those teams, which we are more than capable of doing.”

Doubles play was a tale of a big win and two near-misses for the Eagles. Oliver Webb and Andrew Dromsky earned a win in their opening round match over the top-seeded singles player, van Overbeek, and his partner, Johnson, from Florida, 8-5. In the second round they were up 7-6 and serving for the match, but fell 9-7 to the eighth seeded team of Pramming-Acuna from South Florida.

The Djouad-Osorio pair earned a bye into the round of 32 and a match against Georgia’s second seeded team of Pasha-Brasseaux. Again the Eagles led 7-6 on serve for the match, but fell 9-8 (3) in the tiebreak. Southern’s third doubles pair of Matthijs Verdam and Alex Doherty fell 8-5 to Kennessaw State’s Menhofer-Theodor team.

In Thursday’s qualifying round, just Andrew Dromsky was able to make it to the main draw with a pair of wins over Miami (Fla.’s) Jack Murphy and North Florida’s Benardo Creveiro. Rayane Djouad won his opening round match against FGCU’s Dylan Gunning, but fell to Georgia’s Casey Kay 6-7 (2), 6-0, 6-3 in the qualifying final.

In singles play, Oliver Webb won the opening set against seventh seeded Jordan Kelly-Houston from Florida State 6-3, but dropped the remaining sets 6-2, 6-2. Kelly-Houston would go on to fall in the quarterfinals, falling to the top-seed from Florida. Matthijs Verdam and Dromsky were both eliminated from the singles draw by matching 6-3, 6-2 lines.

The final outing of the 2012 fall season is this weekend at the Citadel Invitational in Charleston, S.C. The tournament runs Friday through Sunday in South Carolina’s Low Country.

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Category: Men's Tennis

Published on Monday, 22 October 2012 12:13