|
No. 13 VU Men’s Tennis Falls To No. 14 LSU, 5-2 3/21/2004
No. 13 VU Men’s Tennis Falls To No. 14 LSU, 5-2 NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The 13th-ranked Vanderbilt men’s tennis team dropped a 5-2 decision to Southeastern Conference rival LSU at the Brownlee O. Currey Jr. Tennis Center Sunday. The Commodores were unable to recover after dropping a hotly contested doubles point and went on to lose four singles lines. The Commodores’ lone doubles win came on center court, where senior Chad Harris and junior Scott Brown combined to defeat LSU’s 20th-ranked pair of Bryan Fisher and Jason Hazley, 8-5. The Dores would drop matches on the remaining two courts and begin the match down, 1-0. The Tigers clinched the doubles point at the second line in a tiebreaker, 9-8 (5). Playing indoors on only five courts, the Commodores would take three first sets and looked ready to climb back into the match. But LSU struck first, taking a pair of straight-set victories at first and fourth singles. Nashville-native Bryan Fisher (Montgomery Bell Academy) defeated VU’s Matt Lockin at fourth singles to give the Tigers a 2-0 lead. Reigning SEC Player of the Week Ken Skupski then defeated Harris to give LSU a 3-0 advantage. The Commodores began their comeback at third singles, where senior Zach Dailey tallied a straight-set win to put Vanderbilt on the scoreboard. Brown brought the Commodores to within a point by finishing off Hazley at second singles, 7-5, 6-4. The Commodore comeback would falter, however, when VU senior Lew Smith, who won his first set, 7-5, dropped the next two sets by the same 6-3 margin. The victory for LSU’s Sebastian Rutka gave the Tigers the clinching point of the match. With the match already decided, sophomore Greg Sossaman dropped a straight-set decision at sixth singles to give VU its final 5-2 deficit. The Commodores (9-6, 3-2 in the SEC) travel to Alabama next weekend to face conference opponents Alabama and Auburn on March 26 and 28, respectively. LSU 5, Vanderbilt 2 |
