SAN ANTONIO — The No. 48 St. Mary's men's tennis team suffered a 7-2 loss at home Wednesday to nationally ranked No. 22 Drury University.
The Rattlers fell into a 1-2 hole early after losing two of the three doubles positions.
Zachary Nicholson and
Jared Fellows fell at the top doubles position 8-5 to Drury's top team of Lukas Kriem and Roman Gonda. At the No. 2 doubles spot, the Rattlers also fell 8-3.
The lone doubles victory for the Rattlers came at the No. 3 position, with freshmen
Matt Banner and
Brien Galon taking a 8-5 victory over Drury's Jorge Nadal and Dmitri Lebedyev.
In singles, the Rattlers were unable to make a comeback as the top three singles spots fell in favor of Drury to give Drury a 5-1 lead, clinching the match.
At No. 1 and No. 2 singles, the Rattlers fell in straight sets, but put up a fight at the No. 3 position where freshman
Jared Fellows pushed Drury's Lukas Kriem to a third set. However, Fellows was unable to close out the final set, losing a final score of 7-6, 3-6, 6-3.
The No. 4 position was also a battle as junior
Carlos Olea fell in a closely contested loss to Drury's Sergio Manzanas 6-4, 7-6 (4).
The singles highlight of the day came at the No. 6 position as freshman
Brien Galon picked up another singles victory over a highly ranked team. Galon won in a straight-set victory over Drury's Sebastian Zapata a score of 6-4, 6-2.
“This is a tough opponent; we needed to be firing on all cylinders to take a victory and that didn't happen today,” said St. Mary's head tennis coach
Lisa Dausin. “We need to regroup and learn from our mistakes today so that we are ready for some tough regional matches this weekend.”
With the loss, St. Mary's men's tennis moves to 8-5 on the season. They return to the courts next to face Heartland Conference rival nationally ranked No. 17 St. Edward's University at 9 a.m. Saturday. The next day the Rattlers will face off against another nationally ranked opponent, No. 14 Abilene Christian University at 10 a.m. Sunday. Both matches will be played at the St. Mary's Tennis Courts.
St. Mary's University, as a Catholic Marianist University, fosters the formation of people in faith and educates leaders for the common good through community service, integrated liberal arts and professional education, and academic excellence. The University has six athletic national titles: men's basketball (1989–NAIA), baseball (2001–NCAA Div. II), softball (1986–NAIA and 2002–NCAA Div. II) and an individual national champion in men's golf (2006–NCAA Div. II) and a national academic championship in men's golf (2009–NCAA Div. II). St. Mary's also had more than 40 percent of its athletes named to conference, regional and/or national honor rolls this past year. St. Mary's student–athletes graduation rate is 65 percent, higher than the NCAA Division II average of 55 percent. To learn more about St. Mary's, visit www.rattlerathletics.com.
