September 29, 2012

PHILADELPHIA, PA – The doubles team of Damien David and Ivan Vereshchaga scored a victory on Saturday to remain undefeated and move into the semifinal round as the University at Buffalo men's tennis team completed play at the Penn Invite. There is no team scoring in the tournament which includes 16 teams.

Playing in the A flight of the doubles competition, David and Vereshchaga needed an 8-6 tiebreaker win to knock off the St. Joseph's duo of Jose Sierra and Alex Veronis, 9-8, and move into Sunday's semifinal round against Princeton's Dan Davies and Zack McCourt. UB's other A flight doubles duo of Vusa Hove and Akhil Mehta weren't as fortunate as they fell in the quarterfinal round to Eric Frueh and Brendan Ruddock of Minnesota, 8-4.

The Bulls also moved a pair of singles players into Sunday's consolation round finals.

Jason Simon bested Temple's Hicham Belkssir, 6-2, 6-1, in the quarterfinal consolation of the Ben Franklin flight to open the day. Simon then needed a 10-8 third-set super-tiebreaker win to advance past Timur Chemykh of Lehigh, 3-6, 6-4, 10-8, to advance into the consolation final against Daniel Grauel of Norfolk State on Sunday.

Playing in the consolation round of the Red flight, Yevgeniy Jason Shkodnik defeated Alejandro Rios of Iowa,, 6-1, 6-3, in the quarterfinals and David Goldblum of Lehigh, 6-4, 7-6 (5), in the semifinal round. Shkodnik will face Delaware's Evan Andrews on Sunday for the consolation title.

Vereshchaga and Hove were eliminated in the main draw of their singles flights on Saturday. Vereshchaga downed Dominic Patrick of Iowa, 6-0, 6-3, in Saturday's quarterfinal of the Levy flight before falling to Adam Lawton of Delaware, 6-2, 6-4, in the semifinal. Hove, playing in the Penn flight, lost his quarterfinal match against Jonathan Carcione of Princeton in a third-set super-tiebreaker, 6-4, 3-6, 13-11.

Play concludes Sunday.