Jacksonville, Fla. ? The 69th-ranked Stetson men's tennis team (8-3, 2-0 Atlantic Sun) returned to conference play Friday afternoon, sweating out a tough 4-3 victory on the road at Jacksonville (3-2, 0-1 A-Sun). The Hatters dropped the doubles point, won three of the first five singles matches and took home the victory when JU's Jordi Ballester had to retire from the #1 singles match against Stetson senior Filip Kricka (Umag, Croatia). Freshman Maksim Levanovich (Minsk, Belarus) was an outright double winner for Stetson against the Dolphins.
Levanovich and Kricka helped Stetson get as close to the doubles point as they could, beating Victor Vaz and Murilo Souza 8-2 at the #2 slot, but Jacksonville took the other two matches and grabbed a 1-0 lead heading into singles play.
The Hatters reeled off three consecutive straight-set victories to take a 3-1 lead, including wins by Levanovich, sophomore Gokay Celik (Istanbul, Turkey) and freshman Cesare Gallo (Portogruaro, Italy), but the Dolphins responded with a pair of wins to bring everything down to the #1 singles match between Kricka and Ballester. Ballester won the first set 6-4 and Kricka came back with a 6-2 win in the second set, but Ballester was unable to continue, giving Kricka and the Hatters their eighth win of the 2009 season.
Stetson returns to the First Coast at 2 pm. Sunday to visit North Florida, looking to remain unbeaten in A-Sun action.
