Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Men's Tennis starts play at Hoosier Classic
09/18/2009 | 12:00:00 | Men's Tennis
Sept. 18, 2009
By Michael Benson
www.SIUSalukis.com
Bloomington, Ind. - The SIU men's tennis team opened up play today at the Hoosier Classic in Bloomington, Ind.
Brandon Florez came out strong in Singles Flight #1, as he held off Xavier's Chris Herrlinger (6-3, 6-7[6], 6-1). Florez also impressed in doubles, teaming up with fellow freshman Chikara Kidera to take down Michael Basha and Michael Calderone of Western Michigan in the first round (9-7). However, the freshman duo was defeated in the second round by Ben Raynauld and Bryce Warren of Butler (8-4).
In other singles action, Falk DeBeenhouwer saw his first action as a Saluki, falling to Indiana's Jeremy Langer (6-1, 6-2) in Singles Flight #1. In Flight #2, Orhan Spahic was defeated by Pablo Olivarez of Western Michigan (6-3, 6-0) and Kidera fell to Josh McTaggart of Indiana (6-0, 6-1). Flight #3 saw Pavlo Buryi fall to Western Michigan's Brad Noel (6-0, 6-1), while Jordan Snyder was topped by Jay Jones of Cleveland State (6-2, 6-2).
In the doubles bracket, Lucas Waked and DeBeenhouwer were bested by Cleveland State's John Haley and Chris Klepatz (8-5), but rebounded to handily take down Taylor Tunis and Nick Volz of IUPUI (8-2). Meanwhile, in the bottom half of the bracket, Anton Leonenko and Spahic defeated Indiana's Santiago Gruter and Will Kendall before falling to Greg Anderson and Bradley Bryan of Morehead State in the second round. Also, Snyder and Buryi fell to Alejandro Calligari and Robert Hall of Louisville (8-1), then were defeated by IUPUI's Daniel Klingenberg and Deon Shafer (8-2).
"Brandon played an excellent singles match today and showed some perseverance," said head coach Dann Nelson. "In doubles, all of our teams are competing together for the first time and showed they can play well in spurts. Anton and Orhan won their first match together as did Chikara and Brandon."
"We are looking to improve and have better results tomorrow. For four of our players, this is their first real college tennis match."
Players Mentioned
