April 9, 2006
Final Stats
NORMAL, Ill. -
The Illinois State men's tennis team has never reached an eight match win streak under head coach Greg Kennett's program until they defeated Creighton over the weekend. The match marked ISU's third conference victory as the squad improves to 11-6, 3-0 while the Bluejays drop to 4-7, 0-2.
To start the match, Illinois State swept Creighton in doubles. At the No. 1 position Alban Renard and Oscar Beich topped Vinny Meens and Joe Eckert of the Bluejays, 8-3. Luka Marinkovic and Daniel Tobar dropped Jose Guerra and Chris Miller of Creighton at the No. 3 spot, 8-5. Marinkovic and Tobar recorded their eleventh doubles win together and have not lost a match as a doubles combination all spring.
In singles action, Nuno Jacinto made short work of Meens in a 6-0, 6-0 win at the No. 3 slot, while Marinkovic followed with a 6-0, 6-0 victory over Miller at the No. 5 position.
Kennett is pleased with Jacinto's efforts.
"Nuno played terrific today," said Kennett. "He didn't play quite as well yesterday, but he came out and fought hard today. I haven't seen Nuno play that well all season and it was great to see that."
Seniors Renard and Djordje Uskokovic competed in their last home match at the McCormick Courts and ended on a high-note. Renard downed Nikita Dudar at the No. 2 singles position 6-3, 6-2 and Uskokovic defeated Eduardo Pignatari 6-2, 6-4 at the No. 4 singles spot.
The win against Creighton marks Illinois States seventh shutout win of the season, five of which came from the last eight matches.
However, Kennett wants to take each match one by one and keep his players prepared to compete physically and mentally.
"It was great to win all the matches today," said Kennett. "But its hard to compete after you have just won a tough match the day before, and that seemed to be the case today. We played well when we needed to but overall we had some errors that we could have avoided. I think we need to play with more intensity, especially when we are going to have two tough matches on the road next weekend. I hope we can be mentally prepared to do that."
Illinois State will begin its four match road trip to compete at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 15 against Wichita State.
