March 9, 2012
LOS ANGELES -
BRIEFLY
The Lions will face Boston University and Montana State in a doubleheader at the LMU Tennis Center on Sunday, March 11. The match versus Boston University will commence at 9:30 a.m. and the doubleheader will conclude with Montana State beginning at 1:30 p.m.
LION TRACKS
LMU fell to No. 51 Rice University, 6-1, Thursday at a neutral site match at the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club. The Lions were swept in doubles, but saw its #1 Nicholas Bjerke gain a victory in singles. The loss snapped a three-match winning streak for LMU.
"It was a very frustrating match result," said head coach Brad Sceney. When describing the team's play, Sceney said, "there is certainly no shortage of chances, we just have to do a better job of converting. When we play quality opposition, there's only so many chances you have before it will come back to bite you."
The junior from Oslo, Norway, Bjerke, defeated Rice's #1 Harry Fowler, 6-0, 7-5 for LMU's only win in singles. The victory was Bjerke's third straight singles win; the prior two on court two. "Nicholas continued his great form," Sceney mentioned. Sceney continued, "he has been very steady at 2 for us so far, but fantastic for him to step up and play in the 1 spot."
Lions' Alex Wilton and Sebastian Bustamante each won their first sets 7-6, but were unable to gain an additional set to win their matches. Wilton lost to Sam Garforth-Bles, 6-7, 6-4, 6-4. Bustamante was defeated by Chang, 6-7, 6-4, 6-3.
Felix Van Kann also won his first set, but fell, 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 to Nusslein. Saravia defeated Todd Volmari, 6-1, 6-2. Tom Price lost to Philipp Seifert, 7-6, 6-4.
In doubles, Volmari and Simko fell to Saravia and Fowler, 8-4. Nuesslin and Chanf defeated Bjerke and Bustmante, 8-5. Wilton and Van Kann were unable to put away Garforth-Bles and Berger and lost, 8-6.
PLAYER OF THE MONTH
The West Coast Conference has named LMU junior Nicholas Bjerke as player of the month for February. The junior went 5-0 during the month playing No. 2 singles and helped lead the Lions to a three-match winning streak during the month.
Bjerke defeated opponents from No. 54 UNLV, New Mexico State, UC Davis, Pacific and UC Riverside. In his win over No. 54 UNLV, Bjerke defeated Tamas Batyl by a score of 6-1, 6-3. He won four of his five matches in straight sets, coming from behind in his other victory over the University of Pacific's Tomasz Krzyszkowski 2-6, 7-5, 6-2.
ABOUT BOSTON UNIVERSITY
The Boston University men's tennis team battled hard but came up just short against Connecticut, 5-2, on Friday afternoon in Haverhill, Mass. The Huskies won two of the three doubles matches for the first point and then pulled out four singles victories to improve to 3-2 on the season.
Dropping to 0-8, the Terriers are on a Spring Break trip in California.
ABOUT MONTANA STATE
For Montana State, Freshman Niklas Brandes has settled comfortably into the no. 1 singles position on the ladder, and he teams with Sophomore Markus Schleuter to comprise a formidable doubles tandem.
Montana State has a current record of 3-6, beating Portland State, Utah State, and MSU-Billings. Montana State will not only face LMU, but is scheduled to play UC Riverside on March 12 as well.
HEAD COACH Brad Sceney
Brad Sceney is in his fifth year as head coach of the Loyola Marymount men's tennis team. Sceney has led the Lions to back-to-back fifth place finishes at the WCC Tournament in 2010 and 2011. Overall in the four years that Sceney has been at LMU, the Lions have finished 5th in 2011 and 2010, 6th in 2009 and 5th in 2008.
An All-American while at Pepperdine, Sceney helped the Waves to a top-10 ranking each of his four seasons in Malibu. His mark of 85 career singles victories is still the Pepperdine record today. In 1996, Sceney won the All-American Doubles Championship.
PRESEASON POLL
The Pepperdine's men's tennis team was chosen to finish first in the 2012 West Coast Conference preseason poll. Pepperdine received the maximum 64 total points after earning first place votes from all the men's head coaches around the conference. San Diego, the reigning 2011 WCC Champion, was chosen to finish second.
The men's preseason all-conference team included familiar names from last season's all conference list. The new additions to the team are Pepperdine junior Mousheg Hovhannisyan and BYU Senior Greogy Batrakov.
-GO LIONS-
