Feb. 21, 2009

STARKVILLE, Miss. -

Results

The Memphis men's tennis team dropped to 5-3 on the season with a loss to the Mississippi State Bulldogs in Starkville, Miss., on Friday afternoon at the Pitts Tennis Centre. The Bulldogs improve to 3-2 with the victory.

Mississippi State kicked off the match by winning all three of the doubles matches with their opponents from the Bluff City. At the No. 3 doubles position, Charlie Ramsay and Leon Nasemann fell to a pair of freshman for the Bulldogs, Artem Ilyushin and Louis Cant, 8-1. Ramsay and Nasemann are now 1-2 this season.

The Bulldogs won the doubles point with a victory at the No. 1 slot. Chris Doerr and Tanner Stump upended the U of M's No. 1 duo of Jorge Vazquez and Spencer Heflin. Doerr and Stump had the opportunity to compete against the nation's top two doubles tandems earlier this season, facing Ole Miss' Bram ten Berge and Jonas Berg, as well as USC's Robert Farah and Steve Johnson. Vazquez and Heflin are now 1-2 on the year. At the No. 2 doubles position, Antonio Lastre and Daniel Sanchez improved to 5-0 with a defeat of Benedikt Fischer and Jordan Smith. Fischer and Smith drop to 6-4 in doubles this season.

In singles play, the Tigers picked up a victory from their No. 1 singles player, Vazquez, a senior from La Coruna, Spain. Vazquez is currently rated as the 51st-best singles player in the nation. He upended Ryan Farlow of MSU, 6-4, 6-4. With the win, Vazquez improves to 7-2. His only losses on the season are to Nick Cromydas of No. 28 Vanderbilt and Lucas Jovita of South Florida, who was ranked No. 27 at the time of the defeat. The Bulldogs' Farlow drops to 1-3 on the year.

The Tigers also had an opportunity to pick up a win at the No. 2 singles spot. Nasemann and Sanchez tied the first set, 6-6, forcing a tiebreaker. Sanchez won the tiebreaker and the first set. The second set also went to deciding tiebreaker, with Sanchez also taking that tiebreaker and the match. Nasemann is 4-6 so far in his second season at the U of M.

At No. 6 singles, Stump upended Michael Gaerthoeffner in the first set, 6-4. Gaerthoeffner, a sophomore from Rheine, Germany, rebounded from the first set loss to take down Stump, 6-4, in the second set. Stump won the match with a 6-2 defeat of his Memphis opponent in the third set. Gaerthoeffner's 2009 singles record falls to 3-4.

At the No. 3 singles spot, Ramsay and Ilyushin played to a tiebreaker in the first set, with Ilyushin defeating Ramsay. In the second set, Mississippi State's Ilyushin was victorious, 6-3. Ramsay, a junior from Chattanooga, Tenn., now boasts a record of 4-5.

At the No. 5 singles position, freshman David Henry was upended by Lastre, 6-1, 6-1. Henry's record in his first year with the team is now 1-3.

At No. 4 singles, Fischer, a senior from Dusseldorf, Germany, fell at the hands of Cant, 6-1, 6-3. Fischer carries a mark of 5-5 in his final season with the Tigers. Memphis will take on the Georgia State Bulldogs today at the Pitts Tennis Centre at 11 a.m.