Men's Tennis Falls in Conference Semifinals

Saturday, April 24

New Orleans, La.

4:00 PM

Florida Atlantic

Troy

4/24/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis

Box Score

April 24, 2010

Final Stats

The Florida Atlantic University men's tennis team fell to Troy University this spring, falling 4-2 in a semifinal round match at the Sun Belt Conference Championships on Saturday in New Orleans.

FAU grabbed the early momentum in this encounter by winning the only doubles point. The junior duo of Ervin Garibovic and Joshua Scholl was victorious 8-5 at the No. 2 position, while junior Marc Abdelnour and freshman Matthew Braunworth was an 8-3 winner at No. 3 doubles.

Braunworth gave the Owls their second team point, evening the match at 2-2, with a straight-set 6-3, 6-4 victory at No. 6 singles. It marked the second victory in the conference tournament for the Boca Raton native. Braunworth ended the regular season with a team-best 15 singles victories.

"It was a great college tennis match," said Brandon Stokes, FAU's head men's tennis coach. "We came up short which stings."

Stokes later went on state: "We lacked a total team effort in singles which was disappointing after a fantastic team performance in doubles. We failed to grab the momentum today when we had them. Troy grabbed it instead."

However, the team couldn't get another victory and Troy secured the match with a three-set decision at No. 2 singles. The No. 2-seeded Trojans advance to Sunday's championship match against top-seed University of Denver.

The match marked the regular season finale for senior Lawrence Harradine. The Barcelona, Spain native won 13 matches this season and has 58 career singles wins. Harradine also collected 103 total victories between singles and doubles during his career.

FAU will now wait and see if it gets an at-large invitation to compete in the NCAA Division I tournament, which begins on May 14.

No. 2 Troy 4, No. 3 Florida Atlantic 2

Singles

No. 1 Luis Henrique Grangeiro (TROY) def. Marc Abdelnour (FAU) 6-4, 6-2

No. 2 Aurelien Tave (TROY) def. Lawrence Harradine (FAU) 3-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3

No. 3 Ervin Garibovic (FAU) and Branko Weber (TROY) unfinished

No. 4 Xavier Masson (TROY) def. Joshua Scholl (FAU) 6-4, 6-3

No. 5 Mario Rolemberg (TROY) def. Georg Matschke (FAU) 6-3, 6-1

No. 6 Matthew Braunworth (FAU) def. Guilherme Sahadi (TROY) 6-3, 6-4

Doubles

No. 1 Harradine/Matschke (FAU) and Grangeiro/Rolemberg (TROY) unfinished

No. 2 Garibovic/Scholl (FAU) def. Weber/Masson (TROY) 8-5