April 21, 2006

Results

TULSA, Okla. - The Southern Miss men's tennis team lost to No. 1 seed, and No. 28 ranked Rice, 4-0, today in the opening round of the 2006 Conference USA Men's Tennis Championship hosted by Tulsa to conclude the season with a tie for fifth place at the tournament.

With the loss, the Golden Eagles end the season with a 6-14 record, including a 1-2 regular season C-USA record, while Rice improves to 17-6 and advances to the semifinals to face No. 4 seed UAB.

"We were in three of the singles and needed to have won at one of the doubles in order to have had a chance to win," Head Coach Teddy Viator said. "However, they were a little bit deeper than us at the bottom, which was the difference in the match.

"As far as the seniors, I thought that Marc Lux played one of his better matches of the year today. In general, Marc and Reid both had a good year. They played well throughout the year and throughout their careers, and we're going to miss those guys."

Playing to only four points per tournament rules, Rice got off to a quick start by winning two out of three doubles to gain the doubles point and the early 1-0 advantage.

Tony Haerle and Filip Zivojinovic (Rice) defeated Domagoj Anic and Reid Bourgeois at No. 1 doubles, 8-3, and Ben Harknett and Christoph Muller (Rice) defeated Tommy Maestri and Andrew Poole at No. 2 doubles, 8-0, to win the doubles competion.

Marc Lux and Dylan Mezey were up 7-6 on Rodrigo Gabriel and Jason Mok (Rice) at No. 3 doubles, but were unable to finish once Rice won two doubles spots.

Anic/Bourgeois finished the spring season with a team-best 7-5 doubles record, followed by Lux/Mezey (4-2) and Maestri/Poole (1-5).

Though the Golden Eagles battled, they fell in three singles spots for the Owls to claim the victory.

Zivojinovic (Rice) defeated Juan Garzon at No. 3 singles, 6-2, 6-1, Mok (Rice) defeated Mezey at No. 5 singles, 6-3, 6-4, and Gabriel (Rice) defeated Poole at No. 6 singles, 6-2, 6-2 to close out competition.

The singles matches of Lux, Anic and Bourgeois were stopped after Rice won the three necessary points at No. 3, 5 and 6 singles to take the victory.

When the match was stopped, Lux was split with No. 122 Harknett (Rice), 6-3, 3-6 at No. 1 singles, at No. 2 singles Anic and Haerle (Rice) were at, 6-7, 5-5, and Bourgeois split the first two sets with Muller (Rice), 6-3, 1-6, and was up 1-0 at No. 4 singles when the match ended.

Anic (7-11) and Bourgeois (7-10) ended the season tied for the most singles wins in the spring with seven, followed by Mezey (6-14), Garzon (5-11), Lux (5-14), Poole (4-12), Koti (3-6) and Maestri (0-2).

The match also ended the careers of seniors Bourgeois and Lux.

Bourgeois wraps up his career with a 68-51 singles record, tying him for first all-time in career singles wins (68) with David Jansson, and a 41-37 doubles record, placing him fourth all-time in doubles wins (37). Lux finishes with a 27-56 singles record and a 19-43 doubles record.