SAINT LEO â€" Junior Emanuel Lueber helped close the gap with a win in doubles, and later closed it completely with a win in singles, but 8th-ranked Saint Leo won a pair of 3-set matches at the end to pull out a 6-3 victory over #26 Florida Southern Friday night. It was the Moccasins’ first match of the season, and the first time they’ve opened with a Division II top-10 opponent since bringing back men’s tennis 19 years ago.
Friday night’s match was a continuation of one that began on Wednesday, only to be postponed by rain before the completion of doubles. When it resumed, the Moccasins’ #1 doubles team of Lueber (Tiengen, Germany) and senior Benoit Paradis (Quebec City, QB) was able to close out an 8-5 win over Bruno Sisti and Ismail Lemtouni, but the Lions claimed the other two doubles points for a 2-1 lead.
Saint Leo (3-0), which had won its first two matches of the season by identical 7-2 scores, won the first singles point when Lemtouni defeated Paradis, 6-3, 6-3, but Florida Southern won the next two at the #5 and #1 positions. Senior Vladimir Barabash (Puhovka, Ukraine) got the first singles point with a 6-2, 6-1 victory over Oskar Nurmio, and Luebber got the second one by taking down Aloua Adjenak, 7-5, 6-3. That left the team score knotted at 3-3.
The Lions, however, won the final three singles matches, which included 3-set wins by Victor Lozier and Matt Nicholson-Lewis over junior Carl Lundberg (Stocksund, Sweden) and senior Nathan Leavitt (Bradenton, Fla.) at #4 and #1. The Moccasins also dropped a close match at #6, where junior Charles Garneau (L’ancienne-Lorette, QB) fell 7-5, 6-4.
Florida Southern will play its 2014 home opener on Tuesday (Feb. 18) against Eckerd beginning at 3 p.m.
