Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Men's Tennis begins fall season at Middle Tennessee Classic
09/15/2005 | 12:00:00 | Men's Tennis
Sept. 15, 2005
By Lacole Hook
www.siusalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill. - The Southern Illinois Men's Tennis team opens up the fall season this weekend at the Middle Tennessee Classic in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
Coach Dann Nelson, who is beginning his first season at SIU, looks forward to seeing the team in action.
"I am just looking to see how everybody competes," Nelson said. "I don't know if we are ready to compete on the level that I think we can. This tournament will tell us where we need to be."
All seven members of the team will be participating in the tournament along with three doubles teams. The tournament has six singles brackets (16 players each) and three doubles brackets (16 teams each) that includes 91 players from 17 schools. Some of the schools represented are Louisville, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, Auburn and Kentucky.
The fall season is used to prepare the team for conference play in the spring. Nelson says the team is ready to look across the net and see different faces.
"It's a good opportunity for us to find out where we are," Nelson said. "We have been battling ourselves in practice for the last two weeks so it will be nice to see how we do against some other competition."
Bracket play is set to begin Friday at the Buck Bouldin Tennis Center. Here is the list of first-round match ups:
Singles
Rodrigo Lama (SIU) vs. Ryan Fitzgerald (Chattanooga) 12 p.m.
Tomas Gonzalez (SIU) vs. TBD 3 p.m.
Andrey Bubnov (SIU) vs. Javier Rodriguez (Belmont) 11 a.m.
Feilpe Villasenor (SIU) vs. Jordan Hamilton (Indiana Univ.-Southeast) 11:30 a.m.
Sergio Sanchez (SIU) vs. Felipe Abreu (Belmont) 9:30 a.m.
Bojan Ilievski (SIU) vs. Marshall Lipman (Belmont) 8:30 a.m.
Nick Bauer (SIU) vs. TBD 2 p.m.
Doubles
Lama and Villasenor vs. Bruno Andrade and Everton Silva (Freed-Hardeman) 5 p.m.
Gonzalez and Sanchez vs. Josh Surowski and Jordan Hamilton (Indiana Univ.-Southeast) 5:30 p.m.
Bubnov and Ilievski vs. TBD Saturday
