Oct. 16, 2004

MIDLAND, Texas - Men's tennis had a strong weekend performance at the Midland Tournament, but failed to advance to Sunday's championship matches at the Midland Racquet Club.

In Friday's action, Lars Poerschke started the day quickly defeating Thai Kajob of Boise State 6-1, 6-3. In the second round of action, he handled the No. 4 seed Pramod Dabir of Illinois 7-6, 6-1 advancing to the quarter final round on Saturday.

Michal Kokta didn't start the way he wanted to on Friday, falling to Duke's Ned Samuelson 6-4, 6-2 in first- round action. However, Kokta rebounded for his second match defeating Evan Zeder of Illinois 7-5, 3-6, 6-4 in the back draw.

Barry McLaren drew a tough first round facing No. 1 seeded Luben Pampoulov of UCLA. Pampoulov got the best of McLaren 6-3, 6-1. He bounced back defeating Aaron Dadart of Southern Cal 7-5, 6-2.

In the doubles' bracket, Kokta and Poerschke faced Brett Joelson of Texas A&M and Brent Werbeck of Boise State. The Baylor duo defeated the mixed team 8-4.

In Saturday's consolation bracket, Kokta fell to Big 12 Conference foe Michael Innerebener of Texas Tech 4-6, 4-6 ending his weekend.

McLaren overpowered Colin O'Grady of Arizona 6-3, 6-4 in his first match of the day. However he was not able to hold off Pepperdine's Scott Doerner losing 0-6, 2-6 in the elimination match.

Poerschke continued his dominating play defeating Notre Dame's Bren D'Aminko 6-4, 6-3 in the quarter final round. But he couldn't hold off the No. 1 seeded Pampoulov in the semifinal match losing 6-4,3-6,6-4.

Kokta and Poerschke continued their dominance in the doubles bracket by defeating Portland's Roman Borvanov and Matt Loucks 8-4 in the quarter finals. However in their second doubles match on Saturday, the duo fell short as Michael Innerbener and Bojan Szumanski from Texas A&M proved victorious 9-8.