April 22, 2007
2007 Big Ten Championships Bracket
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Results
EVANSTON, Ill. -- Behind a sweep of doubles and wins in 4-of-6 singles matches, the Wildcats closed the regular season on a high note, topping Michigan State Sunday at the Vandy Christie Tennis Center, 5-2. Senior Willy Lock (Lima, Peru/Markham College) took the clincher at No. 1 singles.
The win improves Northwestern to 9-13 and the 'Cats finish Big Ten play with a 4-6 mark. Michigan State drops to 11-15, 2-8 in the Big Ten.
"I thought we did a good job in battling through some tricky conditions," head coach Paul Torricelli said. "We got that first point with doubles and then really started to roll in singles."
As the No. 8 seed in the Big Ten Championships, the Wildcats will have a rematch with Michigan State, the No. 9 seed, Thursday at 8 a.m. CT in the first round.
After the doubles matches, seniors Lock, Christian Tempke (Wentorf, Germany/Gymnasium LobrÜgge) and Matt Christian (Troy, Mich./Brother Rice) were honored in a Senior Day ceremony. Sunday marked the last match in Evanston for the trio. Tempke was presented with the inaugural Arlie Weiss Memorial Sportsmanship Award.
NU took all three doubles matches with the No. 1 pair of Marc Dwyer (Peacthree City, Ga./University of Nebraska-Independent Study H.S.) and Alex Sanborn (Houston, Texas/Kinkaid) leading the way. The duo downed Michael Flowers and Alex Forger, 8-1.
At No. 2, seniors Lock and Christian defeated John Allare and Tyler Sauerbrey, 8-5. Tempke and junior Juan Gomez (Mexico City, Mexico) took down Britton Steele and Brendan Kinkopf at No. 3, 8-6.
The Wildcats took the first four singles matches before surrendering bouts at No. 2 and No. 5 to close the dual. Christian cruised to a 6-0, 6-0 win over Sauerbrey at No. 4, and Dwyer had little trouble with Flowers at No. 3, 6-0, 6-3.
Lock took the clincher at No. 1, 6-2, 6-3, over Forger. Sophomore Alexey Evstratenkov (Moscow, Russia/Moscow International Gymnasia), who got the start at No. 6, took a straight-set win over Jason Norville, 6-4, 6-3.
MSU took the last two matches in third-set match tiebreaks. At No. 2, Allare took the first set from Tempke, 6-2, but the senior fought back to take the second frame, 6-3. Allare got out to an early 7-2 lead in the breaker to determine the match and held on to take the match tiebreak, 10-5.
Gomez dropped his first set to Scott Rasmussen, 6-1, but he came back to force a match tiebreaker with a 7-5 win in the second set. The Spartant took the lead from Gomez in the break at 4-3 and held on for a 10-6 win.
The Wildcats return to action at 8 a.m. CT Thursday against Michigan State in the first round of the Big Ten Championships hosted by Purdue University.