BOILING SPRINGS N.C.- In the last home match of the season this afternoon the Gardner-Webb men's tennis team fell 4-3, to UNC Asheville in a very close Big South Conference match at the Webb Tennis Complex.
Gardner-Webb is now 8-12 on the season with a 2-5 record in the Conference, while Asheville improved to 11-7 overall and 3-5 in Big South play.
Gardner-Webb started out with strong doubles play but would come up empty with losses at the No. 1 and No. 2 positions by match scores of 8-6, and 8-7(4) respectively. At No. 1 the team of Zverkov/Ates fell to Croker/Landau of Asheville, while Prostakov/Kaszas played together at No. 2 doubles losing to Panoulas/Schubel.
At match point in the No. 3 doubles match with GWU up 7-5 in the set the Asheville team of Swindler/Kripak defaulted to GWU's Walker/Hogan in order to move in to singles play faster.
In singles play the match seemed to go back and forth between the two opponents. Asheville would pick up the first win as Gardner-Webb senior Brendan Dempsey took the loss against Josh Windler 6-4, 6-1 at No. 3 singles.
Followed by a Runnin' Bulldog win from red-shirt senior Korhan Ates at No. 4 singles where he defeated Brett Landau 6-1, 6-4. Next to finish was No. 1 singles as Nikita Zverkov dropped his match 6-2, 7-5, to Asheville's Daniel Kripak.
With the overall match score 3-1 freshman Yaroslav Prostakov kept Gardner-Webb in the match with his win at No. 5 singles over Alex Crocker in straight sets by scores of 7-5, 6-2.
Asheville would claim the match victory though shortly thereafter as GWU's Benjamin Kaszas fought hard pushing his No. 2 singles match to three sets before ultimate falling 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 to Thomas Panoulas.
Finishing out today's matches was the No. 6 singles tie between Jonathan Walker and John Schubel. Walker took the first set 6-3, but Schubel bounced back winning the second 6-4, before Walker finished the match strong with and impressive 6-1 victory in the third set.
The Gardner-Webb men's tennis team has one more regular season match to play this season. The Runnin' Bulldogs will travel to Radford University where they will face off against the Highlanders at 10:00 a.m. this coming Saturday, April 11.
