March 15, 2012
BATON ROUGE, La. -
The Illinois State men's tennis dropped to No. 27 Louisiana State Thursday at the W.T. Robinson Tennis Stadium in Baton Rouge, La., 5-1.
Competition began with doubles action. Skip Span and Jusso Ojanen were the first team to finish, losing to Tom Knights and David Roberts in the No. 3 spot, 8-3. In the No. 2 position, Muddappa Appanervanda and Willi Peter fell to Neal Skupski and Roger Anderson, 8-5, giving LSU the first point of the day. Alexander Pelaez and Tuomas Manner dropped to Olivier Borsos and Chris Simpson, 8-5, in the No. 1 spot.
"We definitely had our chances in doubles," said head coach Cris James. "No. 3 doubles we didn't play very well, we got beat up pretty good, but we had chances in No. 1 and No. 2 doubles and just couldn't get it done in either spot."
Pelaez took on Olivier Borsos in the No. 1 position in singles action and lost, 6-1, 5-7, 1-0 while Skip Span fell in the No. 2 spot to Chris Simpson, 6-3, 6-3. In the No. 4 position, Appanervanda lost to Tom Knights 6-2, 6-1. Manner took on Stefan Szacinski in the No. 3 spot, though there was no result because the match was already determined.
Ojanen gave the `Birds a victory in the No. 5 position, beating Roger Anderson, 6-3, 6-7, 1-0.
"Jusso has been struggling a little bit lately with his confidence," said James. "It was nice to see him get a win. Hopefully his victory will give him some confidence to keep going. We have been kind of expecting a lot out of him so it was nice to see him play at the level I know he can play at."
James is confident playing against tough competition allows his team to continue to develop.
"LSU is ranked in the top 30 teams in the country," said James. "I wanted our guys to see what that level looks like. I wanted our team to see what LSU does well and hopefully learn some things from it."
Illinois State will be back in action Saturday in New Orleans to take on St. John's for the `Birds final match of spring break. Play is set to begin at 11 a.m.
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