The men's tennis team closed out its season at the Conference USA championship in Louisville with a 4-0 loss to South Florida Thursday and a 4-1 loss to East Carolina Friday.
Marquette tied with 12th-seeded Saint Louis for 11th place in the tournament.
"We faced a lot of adversity going in there and, against South Florida, I felt like we played well at some spots and put ourselves in a pretty good position, but I think the better team won," head coach Steve Rodecapsaid. "Against East Carolina, I don't think we played our best match of the year."
The Golden Eagles were forced to shift players one spot up in the lineup due to the absence of senior Troy Delmege, who normally plays at the No. 2 position in singles and at No. 1 doubles with junior Eigis Vedrickas.
Rodecap and assistant coach Armando Espinosa did not comment on why Delmege did not play, but Rodecap did talk about the impact of the senior's absence.
"When you take out one of your top guys out (of) the lineup, obviously you're going to be affected, but I don't think the guys let it get to them very much," he said.
Freshman Greg Sirotek recorded Marquette's only singles win in the loss to East Carolina with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 victory over ECU's Florian Tremmell in No. 5
singles.
Sirotek opened up a quick 4-0 lead over Tremmell in the first set and won the decisive third set quickly as well.
Fellow freshman Pete Van Lieshout came painfully close to winning his match against Darren Mansell in No. 4 singles.
Mansell topped Van Lieshout with tiebreak wins (7-5, 11-9) in both sets to win the match 7-6, 7-6. Mansell's victory gave East Carolina the necessary four wins for the overall victory.
"It came down to Pete's match. If Pete had won the second (set), we would have still been in the match," Espinosa said. "We could have had a run to play the doubles point, and I think if we had played the doubles point, we have a much better team in doubles."
The match against South Florida Friday was not as close as the East Carolina match or even as close as the first meeting between Marquette and USF.
Uli Kiendl and Federico Barton defeated Van Lieshout and his freshman doubles partner Brett Binkley, 8-4, in No. 1 doubles.
Juniors Ian Kawas and Ricky Servoss lost, 8-6, to Juan Barragan and Dillon Broznya in No. 3 doubles.
The Marquette duo lost serve in the 11th game of their match, breaking the 5-5 stalemate and propelling Barragan and Broznya to the win.
Barton blanked (6-0, 6-0) Binkley in No. 3 singles.
Sirotek (6-2, 6-1) and Servoss (6-2, 6-2) also fell quickly at the No. 5 and No. 6 positions, respectively, to give South Florida the win.
This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 26 2005.