Sept. 27, 2003
Quotes
Two Fighting Illini sophomores, Pramod Dabir and Ryler DeHeart competed at the Charles Fluitt Tennis Invitational, hosted by the University of Kentucky. The Illini split on the day with Dabir winning both his matches and DeHeart losing both of his.
After having his 24-match singles winning streak snapped yesterday, Dabir won two matches on the day, his first win coming against Derek Boland of Evansville by the score of 7-5, 5-7, 6-3. In his second match Dabir defeated Alexandru Nomicos of Southern Illinois University.
"Pramod played well today," said Associate Head Coach Bruce Berque. "He won two close matches. In his second match against Nomicos--we didn't know anything about him coming into the match. He (Nomicos) kind of surprised us, and it took Pramod a little into the match to know how to play him."
"Tomorrow I want him to continue to work on his return serves," continued Berque. "Yesterday he wasn't being aggressive in his returns, but today I think that he continually got better as the matches went on. Pramod is improving; Coach Tiley and I wanted him to get some matches in, since he won't be competing next weekend, so he can improve for the spring season."
No. 44 Ryler DeHeart concluded his tournament play today by losing two matches to University of Kentucky opponents. He was defeated in his first match by Tigran Martirosyan and by Alex Hume in his second, with scores of 6-4, 6-2 and 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 respectively.
"Ryler was inconsistent, even though he lost to a pretty good player in his second match. He just couldn't string enough points together to win," said Berque. "Ryler has been struggling so we wanted to give him some matches in hope of him getting his rhythm back."
The three-flight singles tournament, featuring athletes from Bellamine, Eastern Kentucky, Evansville, Illinois, Kentucky, Morehead State, Southern Illinois, Virginia Tech, and Wright State will conclude tomorrow with Pramod Dabir playing at 10 a.m. For full results consult the UK athletic website at http://ukathletics.ocsn.com/sports/m-tennis/kty-m-tennis-body.html
