SEEBERGER, WATTS TO PLAY FOR NCAA SINGLES TITLE; DOUBLES ALSO SUN.

ST. LOUIS (May 19) – The 2007 NCAA Men's Tennis Singles and Doubles Championships resumed play Saturday at the Dwight Davis Tennis Center in Forest Park. University of California-Santa Cruz again highlighted competition, sending one player into the singles final and two duos into the doubles semifinals.

Top-ranked Matt Seeberger and Brian Pybas of the UC-Santa Cruz maintained their strong singles play, winning comfortably in the quarterfinals. Seeberger, the 2004 and 2005 singles national champion, defeated upstart Zack Lerner of Amherst College, 6-1, 6-2. Pybas took out 11 th -ranked Jesse Brauer of Gustavus Adolphus College, 6-2, 6-2, setting the stage for a Seeberger/Pybas afternoon semifinal. In that match, Seeberger cruised 6-1, 6-3 to punch his ticket to the championship match.

Washington University in St. Louis freshman John Watts rallied from an early 4-1 deficit to win the first set, 6-4, in the quarters against Conrad Olson of Middlebury College. In the second frame, Olson jumped out of the gates again, this time for a 2-0 advantage, before Watts broke back to level the set at 4-4. Watts finished off the match by a 7-5 margin in the second set.

The other quarterfinal match pitted fifth-ranked Andy Bryan of Gustavus Adolphus and seventh-ranked Evan Webeler of DePauw University. Bryan took the first set 6-3 before Webeler cruised to a 6-1 win in the second frame. Webeler then led 4-1 in the third set, but Bryan responded by winning the next three games to even the match. After an injury timeout for Webeler, he fought off cramping to make good on his fourth match point attempt and claim the third set, 6-4.

Watts then met Webeler in the semifinals, where he prevailed in straight sets by a 6-2, 6-2 margin. A freshman, Watts is the first Washington U. player in program history to advance to the singles championship match.

In doubles play, three of the quarterfinal matches went three sets. Seeberger, who has won a share of the last two NCAA doubles titles at UC-Santa Cruz, paired with Max Ortiz against Washington U.'s Charlie Cutler and Chris Hoeland. Cutler and Hoeland stormed out of the gates for a 5-0 lead en route to winning the first set, 6-1. In the second set, both duos held serve throughout and ended up in a tiebreaker. In the tiebreaker, Cutler and Hoeland took a 3-0 lead before Seeberger and Ortiz rallied to win, 7-5, and take the second set, 7-6. Seeberger and Ortiz faced more adversity late in the third set, when Cutler and Hoeland, leading 5-4, built a 40-Love lead on Ortiz's serve. The seventh-ranked UC-Santa Cruz duo staved off those three match points, though, and rallied to win the game; they then broke Cutler to take a 6-5 lead and Seeberger closed out the match on serve.

Max Liberty-Point and Pybas, also of UC-Santa Cruz, upended second-ranked Bryan and Brauer of Gustavus Adolphus, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (2). Emory University's Michael Goodwin and Yoji Masuoka registered a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 win against top-ranked Larry Wang and Guillaume Schils. Kevin Bergesen and Andrew Thompson, a doubles alternate team from Middlebury, advanced to the semifinals with a 6-3, 6-1 victory against Webeler and Scott Swanson of DePauw.

The Championships conclude Sunday at Dwight Davis Tennis Center. The singles national championship match is set for noon, while the doubles semifinals (2 p.m.) and final (4 p.m.) will follow.