Saturday, September 20, 2008

Box Score

            Valparaiso saw action for the second straight day at the Country Inn & Suites Invitational hosted by Bradley on Saturday afternoon in Peoria, Ill., coming away with mixed results while playing lots of matches.

            “I feel like we’re playing well overall and like where we are at this point in the fall season,” head coach Jim Daugherty said.  “Our guys are competing hard.”

            The tournament saw doubles action wrap up first thing on Saturday morning and in flight number two the duo of Phidias Fortune (San Antonio, Texas/Madison H.S.) and Kyle Stump (Plymouth, Ind./Plymouth H.S.) posted their first victory of the weekend, an 8-4 triumph over Eric Plaushines and Brian McCarthy of Green Bay.  In flight number one, Adam Whitmer (Shipshewana, Ind./Westview H.S.) and Kevin DeHerrera (Littleton, Colo./Chatfield H.S.) topped fell 8-3 to James McArthur and P.J. Hendrie of Saint Louis.

            The action then moved over to singles play.  Alex Lau (Bloomington, Minn./Jefferson Senior H.S.) played in the first flight, falling to Bastian Harbo of UIC 7-6 (4), 6-2.  Lau was then to have faced Bradley’s Milos Romic, but Romic defaulted prior to the start of the match.

            At number two singles, Fortune dropped a pair of decisions, falling 6-2, 6-4 against Saint Louis’ McArthur and 6-2, 6-1 against Sebastian Lystad of UIC.  DeHerrera competed in the third flight for the Brown and Gold, and, after dropping a 7-6 (1), 6-4 match to Matt Keesey of Green Bay, earned his first collegiate singles win 6-4, 6-2 against Sean McManus of Saint Louis.

            In the fourth flight, Stump continued his strong play from doubles winning his first match 5-7, 6-4, 10-4 against Richard Robertson of Bradley.  He then dropped a 6-2, 6-2 contest to Matt Clegg of Green Bay before battling P.J. Hendrie of Saint Louis before falling 6-7 (4), 6-1, 11-9.

            Whitmer dropped all three of his matches in the fifth singles flight.  He opened with a 6-1, 6-0 defeat against Danny Wilson of UIC before falling in a close match to Michel Macara-chvili of Bradley 7-5, 7-6 (4).  The freshman ended his day with a 6-3, 6-4 loss to Plaushines.

            The Crusaders will close out play in Peoria on Sunday morning beginning at 9 a.m.  There are still two more rounds of singles action to be played.