Oct. 23, 2007

QUEENS, N.Y. - St. John's doubles pair of junior Artem Vlasenko and junior Alex Svetlakov reached the quarterfinals of the Main-Doubles Draw, before falling to Penn State's pair of Ryan Gormley and Brendan Lynch, 8-3, Monday afternoon, as the Red Storm wrapped up play in the 2007 Wilson/ITA Northeast Regional Championships hosted by Princeton University.

Vlasenko and Svetlakov defeated three other teams to get into the quarterfinals. The pair breezed past Temple's Saavedra and Valesquez, 8-3, in the opening round, winning a hard fought match, 9-8(3), against Dickinson and Walter of Niagara University in the Round of 32, and outlasting Deleware's Greenberg and Longacre, 8-6, in the Round of 16.

In other doubles action, the Red Storm pair of sophomore Martin Kosut and freshman Pavel Cerny was beaten by Noah Gardner and Sam Garland of Brown, 8-0.

Vlasenko was almost equally as successful in singles play as he was in doubles play. Ranked 13th in the Main-Singles Draw, he earned a first round bye and defeated Columbia's Kevin Kung in the Round of 64 after dropping the first set, 6-7(2), 6-1, 6-4. Vlasenko then bested Penn State's Ryan Gormley, 6-2, 6-1, before falling to 4th-ranked Chris Clayton of Harvard, 6-1, 6-3, in the Round of 16.

Cerny earned his spot in the Main-Singles Draw after defeating a pair of players in the Qualifiers. In the main set, Cerny defeated Holy Cross's Matt Wierzel in the opening round, and met 18th-ranked Sebastien Dietz in the next round, where Dietz defeated Cerny, 6-3, 6-3. Also in the main draw, Martin Kosut defeated Colgate's Martin MacIntyre 6-2, 7-5, in the opening round before dropping the next match to 10th ranked George Carpeni in the Round of 64, and Alex Svetlakov was defeated in a close match by Harvard's Alexei Chijoff-Evans, 6-4, 5-7, 6-3.

In Singles-Qualifying action, junior Jordan Talbot defeated Brian Mikkelson of Quinnipiac, 6-3, 6-2, in the opening round, before falling to Georgetown's David Tillem 3-6, 6-2, 6-4. St. John's sophomore Derek Wallensteen was defeated by Brown's Noah Gardner, 7-5, 6-3 in the opening round.

The Red Storm men's tennis team returns to the courts January 25-27 when the team will participate in the Columbia University Invitational held in New York, N.Y.