Southern Illinoise University Athletics
Men's Tennis starts off MVC play against Wichita State
04/08/2011 | 12:00:00 | Men's Tennis
April 8, 2011
By Tyler Wooten
SIUSalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- The Saluki Men's Tennis team will begin their Missouri Valley Conference schedule this Saturday at Wichita State, hoping to rectify a 2-5 MVC record from 2010.
Location: Wichita, Kan.
Site: Sheldon Coleman Tennis Complex
First Serve 1 p.m.
Head Coaches: Dann Nelson (84-69 in Division I, 66-55 at SIU); Brad Louderback (55-33 at WSU)
Previously On... SIU: The Salukis (7-4) defeated the Panthers of Eastern Illinois, 5-2, on Wednesday (April 6) in Carbondale at Sports Blast.
WSU: The Shockers (12-7) beat the Jets of Newman University, 7-0, on Wednesday (April 6) in Wichita at the Sheldon Coleman Tennis Complex.
Freshman Phenom Saluki freshman Adam Fabik has paced the play of the Southern Illinois Men's Tennis team since he stepped foot on campus. In his first collegiate experience he took the Flight A singles crown at the Purdue Invitational in September, besting players from Iowa, Purdue, Notre Dame and Western Michigan en route to the title. Fabik's excellence continued throughout the fall season where he posted a 17-1 singles record after winning 17 straight matches, surpassing the fall record previously held by Lukasz Soswa.
This spring, Fabik is 10-1 in singles dual-match competition. With his tenth win this past Wednesday that improved him to 28-4 overall, Fabik took sole possession of second place on the SIU all-time singles wins list for a season by passing Mickey Maule's 1990 mark of 27. Fabik is eleven wins away from breaking Maule's all-time mark of 38, which was set in 1988.
Youth in Charge Southern Illinois has only one senior on their roster (Falk De Beenhouwer), but the level of play has not been indicative of a team full of freshmen and sophomores. Three of the top five singles records belong to incoming freshmen -- Fabik (10-1), Jorge Cavero (9-2) and Carlos Do Val (6-5). The other two of those five are sophomores Brandon Florez (8-3) and Orhan Spahic (7-3).
Coach's Corner Head Coach Dann Nelson: "We really need to get healthy and we need to get confident. We've really come a long way in our doubles, and now it's time for the entire team to show up all at once on the same day and give all of the effort they can. If all of these things come together we should have a pretty decent conference outing."
"We're young and we're very talented and we don't know how good we can be yet. That's the exciting part -- we have young guys who don't really know how good they can be and we're talented, so the sky is the limit for us. There are other teams in the conference that are older than us and maybe more talented, but we're so young that maybe we don't know how good we can be yet -- that's the fun part."
Players Mentioned
