Lehigh University Athletics
Mountain Hawks earn rematch with Raiders in PLT
4/22/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
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BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Lehigh men’s tennis team heads to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania for the 2010 Patriot League tournament, which begins Friday on Bucknell’s Varsity Tennis Courts. The Mountain Hawks earned the No. 5 seed in the tournament after defeating rival Lafayette on Monday and will face the No. 4 seed Colgate Raiders in Friday’s first quarterfinal. Lehigh will be looking to exact revenge against a Colgate squad that edged the Mountain Hawks 4-3 back on April 10 inside the Lewis Tennis Center.
Monday’s win over Lafayette allowed Lehigh to finish the regular season at 9-11 overall and 2-4 in league matches.
The Mountain Hawks have been led by the trio of juniors Troy List and Collin Laffey and freshman Andrew Krentz, who each went 5-1 in singles matches against Patriot League foes. List owns the top record on the team with a 13-7 mark at No. 1 singles, while Laffey came on in the second half of the season to finish 11-9 at No. 2 singles. Krentz has brought depth to the bottom of the Lehigh lineup with a 10-6 record playing primarily at the No. 6 flight.
“Those guys have been money for us,” said Lehigh head coach Dave Shook. “It’s all about Friday morning though, and hopefully they can continue to find ways to win. I feel good about them, but we still have to figure out a way to win the doubles point, and if not one of the other guys is going to have to step up and beat someone.”
List and Krentz were winners for Lehigh in the first meeting against Colgate, along with sophomore Ryan Krueger who beat Sean Spellberg in straight sets at No. 5. The rest of Lehigh’s singles lineup includes sophomore Leland Richardson at No. 3 singles and freshman Matt Savran at No. 4 singles.
The doubles point may go a long way to determining Friday’s winner and Lehigh will rely on List and Laffey at No. 1 doubles. The duo produced a team-best 11 doubles wins and sported a 3-3 record against league opponents. Shook revamped his doubles lineup late in the season, which produced mostly positive results. Juniors Arnaldo Pacheco and Cameron Silbert have taken over the No. 2 doubles spot while Krueger and Savran are expected to man No. 3 doubles.
During the regular season, Lehigh beat Lafayette and Holy Cross and lost to Army, Navy, Colgate and Bucknell. The matches against the Black Knights, Raiders and Bison were all very close and decided by 4-3 scores.
“If you do the math, we have three guys who are 5-1 and as a team we won two of our six league matches”, explained Shook. “Three of those four that we lost, we lost 4-3. We’re going to need that doubles point. If we can get it we have a chance with the success we’ve had in singles.”
Colgate went 9-7 during the regular season, including a 3-2 record in league matches. The Raiders dealt top-seed Army its lone league loss on March 27 but lost to both Navy and Bucknell. Colgate is lead by its senior co-captains John Nogueras and Michael Yassky. Nogueras’ three-set win over Laffey at No. 2 singles was key in the Raiders win over Lehigh on April 10.
Other first round matches on Friday include No. 3 Bucknell against No. 6 Lafayette and No. 2 Navy against No. 7 Holy Cross. Army has a bye into the semifinals where the Black Knights will face the Lehigh-Colgate winner on Saturday morning.
Lehigh has advanced to the Patriot League semifinals just four times, most recently in 2000. The Mountain Hawks have been eliminated by Bucknell in the quarterfinals in each of the last three seasons.
Friday’s Lehigh-Colgate quarterfinal gets underway at 10 a.m. from Bucknell’s Varsity Tennis Courts. In the event of inclement weather, matches will be played indoors at the West Branch Tennis Club in Williamsport, Pa. and the start time would be pushed back to 2 p.m.
Lehigh - Patriot League Tournament Preview
