Feb. 24, 2008
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue's tennis teams suffered a pair of tough losses Sunday afternoon. The Boilermakers' 51st-ranked women's team (2-6) lost 6-1 at home to No. 69 DePaul. Purdue's men's team (5-4) fell at No. 12 Notre Dame 7-0.
Although the Boilermakers were blanked, they played close matches at all three doubles positions and at the No. 4 and 5 singles spots.
At No. 1 doubles, Branko Kuzmanovic and Slavko Bijelica lost 9-8 to Notre Dame's nationally ranked duo of Brett Helgeson and Sheeva Parbu.
Griff Nienberg lost a 13-11 super-tiebreak to David Anderson at No. 5 singles after winning the second set 6-3. Nienberg dropped the first set 7-5.
Notre Dame's Steven Havens held back Eric Ramos at No. 4, winning both sets by a 7-6 margin.
"We had a tough day," he said. "Notre Dame is a good team and they're highly ranked, but this result is unacceptable. I'll have to ask the team and get answers from them as to where we go from here and how we should respond. We have to use this loss as motivation."
Women's head coach Laura Glitz shared in her colleague's disbelief.
"I'm disappointed for sure and I really don't know what happened; I thought these were both winnable matches," she said. "We competed hard in doubles, but couldn't capitalize, then had trouble in singles. I give all the credit to DePaul, they really came out fired up."
The women's team won two matches over the Blue Demons. Senior Brooke Beier and redshirt junior Stephanie Wooten won their second doubles match of the weekend, topping DePaul's Dunja Antunovic and Kirsten Gambrell 8-3.
Freshman Joanna Craven won her match at No. 4 in straight sets 6-3, 6-1 over Beatrix Csordas.
Purdue's men's team returns home to the Schwartz Tennis Center this Friday to play host to Ball State at 5 p.m. The Boilermakers are unbeaten at home with a 5-0 record.
The women's team is off until March 8 when it plays host to Illinois.