Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Whitties Fall in Conference Finals

Unfortunately our dreams of a National Tournament invite were squashed at the hands of PLU. We went into the conference tournament as the #1 seed going undefeated in conference play and defeated PLU twice during the year 7-2 and 5-4. We made it into the finals by defeating #5 seed Willamette who earlier upset #4 seed UPS.

In the Championship match we didn't play our best tennis and PLU played perhaps their best match of the year. We started off in trouble going down 1-2 after the doubles. Our only win in doubles was a 9-8 victory at #2 doubles (Robbie and Christoph). In #1 and #3 doubles we had many chances to break serve and take the lead but couldn't convert the much needed points. About half way through the opening sets we had a total of 11 break points between #1 and #3 doubles but couldn't convert a single one of them.

Even though we were down after the doubles we had our chances in singles. Things actually looked pretty good when we won the first set in 4 of the matches. The Lutes, however, battled hard and ended up winning two of those matches.

Any shot at the national tournament is now out of hands. There are 7 at large bids for the tournament and we are hoping to get one of those spots. For the most part we had a spotless record going 23-7 on the year with our only losses being to 3 DI schools and 3 top 10 NCAA III schools and our BLACK SATURDAY match against PLU.

Match scores

Doubles

No. 1 -- Miller/Larimore (PLU) def. Mam/Ly: 8-6
No. 2 -- Monday/Fuchs (Whitman) def. Loranger/Peterson: 9-7
No. 3 -- Floyd/Vidano (PLU) def. Solomon/Nadeem Kassam: 8-5

Singles

No. 1 -- David Miller (PLU) def. Phalkun Mam: 4-6, 7-5, 6-3
No. 2 -- Steven Ly (Whitman) def. Kevin Floyd: 6-2, 6-2
No. 3 -- Jeff Loranger (PLU) def. Robbie Munday: 4-6, 6-2, 6-4
No. 4 -- Justin Larimore (PLU) def. Matt Solomon: 6-3, 7-5
No. 5 -- Justin Peterson (PLU) def. Christoph Fuchs: 6-1, 6-2
No. 6 -- Jake Cappel (Whitman) def. Jared Vidano: 6-2, 6-3

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