Men's Tennis Edges Red Storm 4-3

4/9/2008

Men's Tennis Egde Red Storm 4-3

Queens, NY - Senior Kirill Azovtsev (St. Petersburg, Russia) rallied from down a set to a thrilling 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory that gave the Clippers a 4-3 win over the Red Storm of Division I St. John's University yesterday in Queens, NY. The 12th ranked Clippers won their sixth straight match and improve to 10-2 overall. St. John's falls to 8-10 overall.

St. John's took control of the match by winning the doubles point. The Red Storm won the top two flights to earn the point for doubles play.

Concordia rallied with three straight wins at #1, # 2 and #4 singles. Sophomore Alex Grubin (Belgrade, Serbia) had a hard fought 7-5, 7-6 (7-3) victory at #1 singles and senior Rodrigo Teixeira (Vitoria, Brazil) edged Alex Svetlakov at #2 singles 6-3, 7-5. Sophomore Henning Ruenz (Muelheim-Kaerlich, Germany) soundly defeated Martin Kosuf 6-3, 6-1 at #4 singles.

The Red Storm rebounded with a 6-4, 6-3 win by Gustavo Loza at #3 singles over sophomore Nik Boerger (Muenster, Germany) and Vlad Malkin (Moscow, Russia) lost to Asaf Honig 6-4, 6-2 at #6 singles to tie the score at 3-3.

With only one match remaining to determine the winner, Azovtsev rallied from down one set at #5 singles to claim the win for Concordia. It was the only flight in all six singles matches to go to three sets.

The Clippers will get very little rest as they return to the courts on Wednesday, April 9th to face the Golden Lions of Dowling College in ECC action. The match will be played in Oakdale, NY and will begin at 3:30 PM.