Feb. 20, 2005
Columbia, S.C. – The 42nd-ranked Carolina men’s tennis team easily dispatched of the Georgia Southern Eagles on Sunday, 6-1, to extend their home unbeaten streak to seven matches. USC (9-1, 0-0 SEC) has now won at least nine of its first ten matches in each of the last four seasons. The Gamecocks swept the doubles matches and won the first five singles matches en route to their sixteenth all-time win over the Eagles (1-7, 0-0 SoCon).
The match opened with the doubles competition, where South Carolina won all three matches for the fifth time this season. At No. 1 doubles, Carolina’s Pedro Rodrigues and Geraldo Knorr won their second match of the day, defeating Vincent Patry and Dani van den Heever 8-5. The win was Rodrigues’ tenth doubles win of the year, making him the second Gamecock to reach double figures in doubles wins this season. At No. 2 doubles, USC’s Tom Eklund and Jaime Cuellar defeated Germano Knorr and Jasha Janashia by a score of 8-5, earning Cuellar his 16th doubles win of the year. In the final doubles match, Gamecocks Ben Atkinson and Dmitry Babenko remained unbeaten as a pair, with an easy 8-2 win over Charles-Henri Trottet and Tom Green of Georgia Southern.
The match then moved to singles, and USC’s Babenko and Rodrigues both made quick work of their opponents, winning 6-2, 6-2 at No. 4 and 2 singles respectively. Babenko won three straight games on both sides of two wins by the Eagles’ Tom Green in the first set and Rodrigues won six of the last seven games over Janashia in their second set. At No. 3 singles, Carolina freshman Jaime Cuellar continued his unbeaten run of nine games in spring singles matches, downing van den Heever 7-5, 6-3. At No. 1 singles, junior Geraldo Knorr clinched the match for the Gamecocks, coming from 5-3 down against Patry, to win the last four games, earning his fifth straight singles victory, 6-2, 7-5. In the final singles match to conclude on Sunday evening, USC junior Adam Adler earned his 10th singles win of the year, defeating Trottet 6-2, 6-4.
USC will return to action next Saturday, Feb. 26, when they host No. 66 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at the Sam Daniels Tennis Center. The match is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m., and admission is free. The Sam Daniels Tennis Center is located at the corner of Sumter and Heyward, adjacent to Sarge Frye Field.
