The Marquette men's tennis team lost its first road match of the season Saturday, falling to 55th-ranked Michigan State 6-1.
The Golden Eagles came out tight from the start against the Spartans and never recovered, according to assistant coach Armando Espinosa.
"We just came out flat," Espinosa said.
The match got off to a rough start for Marquette when senior Troy Delmege and junior Eigis Vedrickas had their serve broken early and couldn't bounce back in the number one doubles match against Andrew Formanczyk and Cameron Marshall. The Michigan State duo took the match 8-4.
Freshmen Brett Binkley and Pete Van Lieshout won the number two double's match 8-5 after taking an early break point from Michigan State's Mike Brown and Anthony Stefani.
Juniors Ian Kawas and Ricky Servoss played even with Bryan Karazia and Joseph McWilliams of Michigan State for the first eight games of their match until the Marquette duo dropped a break point with the score tied at 4-4. Karazia and McWilliams went on to win the match 8-5.
The break between the doubles and singles matches did not seem to help the Golden Eagles regain the composure they exhibited in their season-opening win against Illinois-Chicago.
"We just thought that we had an opportunity and that's all we told them, to go out and fight," Espinosa said.
Verdrickas lost in straight sets 0-6, 2-6 to Formanczyk, the 102nd-ranked singles player in Division I, in the number one singles match.
Delmege suffered a similar fate in the number two singles match, losing 1-6, 3-6 to Marshall.
Kawas (1-6, 3-6), Binkley (2-6, 3-6) and freshman Greg Sirotek (3-6, 6-7) also lost in singles play.
Michigan State took the first sets of all six singles matches in quick fashion, leaving Marquette with the unenviable task of playing catch-up in the second sets of each match.
"Pretty much, in all the courts, all of our first sets were gone in the blink of an eye," Espinosa said, "We fought back, but it was a little bit too late to get back into the matches."
Pete Van Lieshout was the only player who rallied from a first set loss in his match. He defeated Karazia in three sets 4-6, 7-5, 10-2 to win the number six singles match. The victory gave Van Lieshout two straight wins in singles play to go with two wins in doubles play with Binkley.
This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Jan. 25 2005.