Mobile, AL – A pair of doubles wins set up No. 3 Fresno Pacific’s 5-1 win over No. 6 Azusa Pacific on Thursday in a NAIA national quarterfinal match at the Mobile Tennis Center.
The Sunbirds (23-1) advance to Friday’s national semifinals against No. 2 seed Embry Riddle, a 5-1 winner over Savannah College of Art and Design (GA).
Friday’s 7:00am (PT) contest against the Eagles is a rematch from last year’s national semifinal, a 5-3 victory by Fresno Pacific.
Top seed and defending champion Auburn University-Montgomery will battle 4th-seed Cal Baptist in the othersemifinal match. Thursday’s victory over Azusa Pacific was the Sunbirds’ third win over the Cougars this season, following two regular season wins.
Fresno Pacific jumped out to a 2-0 lead by quickly winning two doubles matches. The No. 2 doubles team of Maxime Adam and Marco Foelz hacked their way to an 8-4 win over Ronald Chow and Daniel Moore. Jose Hilla and Fabio Silva followed with an efficient 8-5 win over Janosch Apelt and Ilja Ikonnikov at No. 3.
The Cougars avoided a doubles sweep as they slipped past the No. 1 duo of Alex Gonzalez and Vicente Joli by an 8-5 margin.
Fresno Pacific took a 4-0 lead when No. 5 Adam and No. 6 Hilla won their respective singles matches in straight sets.
That set the stage for Gonzalez to clinch the win over the Cougars’ Apelt. In a battle of the National Player-to-Watch (Gonzalez) versus the National Freshman-of-the-Year (Apelt), it was Gonzalez who prevailed with a 6-3, 7-6 (6) win to send his team to their second consecutive NAIA final four appearance.
For up to date NAIA National Tennis Championship information, please visit:
http://naia.cstv.com/sports/m-tennis/spec-rel/012508aab.html