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University at Buffalo
Princeton Invite
Bulls Open Men's Tennis Season at Princeton Invitational
9/16/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
PRINCETON, NJ – The University at Buffalo men's tennis kicked off the 2011-12 season with the first of three days of competition at the Princeton Invitational. The Bulls finished the day with mixed results winning six of 12 matches.
Play consisted of five flights of singles competition and three doubles flights.
In singles play, Damien David, Vusa Hove and Jason Simon won their opening matches. David made his collegiate debut with a victory in the B flight with a 6-1, 6-1 win over Penn's Phil Law. David will meet Chris Young of Penn State in Saturday's quarterfinal round.
Hove knocked off Quoc-Daniel Nguyen of Cornell, 6-4, 7-5, in the C flight. Hove meets Columbia's Bert Vancura in Saturday's quarterfinals.
Simon, playing in the D flight, defeated Fairleigh Dickinson's Peter Skvarka, 6-4, 6-2. The win sets up a quarterfinal match with Cornell's Evan McElwain on Saturday.
The doubles team of Ivan Vereshchaga and Travis Zappia scored a pair of wins in the C flight with 8-3 wins over Kyle Berman and Zhong Ming Chen of Cornell in their opener and Tizian Bucher and Theodore Marin of Columbia in the next round. The duo advanced to Saturday's semifinal round where they will face Yuri Gricheno and Marco Jermesic of Fairleigh Dickinson.
Hove and Simon combined in the B doubles flights with an opening round 8-1 over Penn State's Taylor Cohen and Chris Hasyn. The UB duo fell in the quarterfinals to Penn's Robert Wong and Jeremy Court by a 9-7 count.
Wojceich Starakiewicz in A singles, Vereshchaga in D singles and Zappia in E singles all fell in their opening round matches. They will play in the consolation rounds on Saturday. Starakiewicz and David dropped both their doubles matches in the A flight.
"It is exciting to start the fall against some of the best competition in the region," said head coach Lee Nickell. "We had mixed results today but we know what we need to do to get better and we are ready to get going tomorrow."
Play continues through Sunday.
