Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Southern Illinois University
Bradley Invite
Men's tennis competed in Bradley Invitational
09/27/2005 | 12:00:00 | Men's Tennis
Sept. 27, 2005
By Lacole Hook
www.siusalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill. - Men's Tennis competed in the Bradley Invitational this past weekend. The singles teams went 6-0 through the first day of the tournament. Tomas Gonzalez defeated both Kane from UMKC (6-1, 6-0) and Allison from SLU (6-0, 6-1). Andrei Bubnov took down Quintanilla of UMKC (6-1, 6-1) and Keesey from Wisconsin-Green Bay (6-4, 6-1). The other Saluki to compete in the singles bracket was Bojan Ilievski, who won his matches against Ciao from UMKC (6-2, 7-5) and Brunette from VU (6-4, 6-0).
Day two of the tournament was where the Salukis saw improvements from their opening tournament in the doubles matches. In their first tournament, no doubles teams won and Coach Dann Nelson pointed out that area as the one they were going to improve.
"This weekend we improved on our performance of a week ago," said Nelson. "Our #1 doubles team played well enough to beat Depaul, St. Louis, Valpo, & Western Illinois."
The number one team Nelson is referring to is the duo of Lama and Gonzalez., who will hopefully continue their winning streak next tournament (10/14/05) at the Louisville Invitational.
During day two, Bubnov and Ilievski were able to keep their winning streaks alive to start the day. Bubnov beat Alex Roby of BU (6-3, 6-4) and Ilievski defeated Macara of BU (6-4, 6-1).
Nelson was impressed with the play of Bubnov, a freshman from Russia that is settling into life at SIU as a student-athlete.
"Adrei Bubnov was undefeated in singles for the weekend, which is a great confidence builder for him," Nelson said.
Watching some of the matches this weekend was not easy for Nelson, who was the tennis coach at Western Illinois last season.
"The hardest doubles matches I have ever had to watch as a coach were SIU and WIU in the Doubles Consolation Final," Nelson said. "All three teams were SIU vs WIU. I knew we were going to beat the team that I spent two years building at Western, but we played well and the matches were never in question."
