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No. 40 Men’s Tennis Edges No. 30 USC 3/13/2005 The No. 40 Vanderbilt men’s tennis team garnered its first SEC win on Sunday, dropping the South Carolina Gamecocks, 4-3 in Columbia. “It’s great,” said Interim Head Coach Eddie Coates. “It couldn’t have come at a better time for us. I told the team that we couldn’t get down after losses against top 10 teams at their place. We had to have this win to get back on track and we needed it to have something to build from.” The Commodores grabbed the first doubles match of the day at the No. 1 position where VU’s No. 27 combination of Scott Brown and Jason Pinsky tripped USC’s Geraldo Knorr and Pedro Rodrigues, 8-3. South Carolina quickly tied things up with a win at the second position, setting up the decisive showdown at No. 3. At the third slot, VU’s Ryan Preston and Jordan Magarik battled USC’s Ben Atkinson and Dmitry Babenko. The USC pair stole the matchup and the doubles point, 9-7. The Commodores rebounded in the singles draw, taking three of the first four matches to take a 3-2 lead. At the No. 1 position, VU’s No. 67 Brown upset USC?s No. 45 Tom Eklund, 6-4, 6-1. The win gave Brown his 10th victory of the year. On court three, Pinsky was able to pull off a straight-set 6-3, 6-3 win over Carolina’s Knorr to give the Commodores their first lead at 2-1. The Commodores extended their lead to 3-1 when Andy Mack defeated Carolina’s Atkinson 7-5, 6-1 on court six. USC’s Jaime Cuellar knotted up the match for the last time with his three set win at the fourth slot over VU’s Nathan Sachs. The Commodores hopes for their first SEC win of the season rested on the young shoulders of freshman Preston. The Northbrook, Ill. native split sets with Babenko and the pair headed to a third set tiebreak to decide the match. Preston stormed back from a four-point deficit to take the breaker, 7-5, and land the Dores their first conference triumph. “That was a tough position for any freshman to be in,” said Coates. “The crowd was going crazy and he was under a load of pressure, but he pulled it out for us today.” |
