MEN'S TENNIS: Slovic, Huskies miss out on Pac-10 tournament title

The honor of being the first men's tennis player from Washington to win a Pac-10 singles title has still yet to be claimed. Senior Alex Slovic became the second player from the UW ever to make it to the final, but was defeated by Stanford's Matt Bruch 6-0, 6-4.

Former Husky Alex Vlaski, the only other UW player to make it that far in the tournament, reached the final match three times in his career but lost each time.

Slovic's loss was the end of an impressive weekend. Going into the tournament, he needed only three victories to move past former Husky Matt Hanlin and take sole possession of the record for career singles and doubles wins at the UW. Although Slovic and partner Daniel Chu were eliminated in the first round of the doubles competition, Slovic's win over California's Eoin Heavey in the quarterfinals of the singles draw pushed him to No. 1 on the combined wins list. He leaves California with 180 victories and yet another record at Washington, in addition to the record for doubles victories that he shares with Chu.

"Alex played pretty well this weekend," UW coach Matt Anger said. "He got off to a slow start in his first round, but after that he really picked it up and played well."

In the Pac-10 Invitational draw, where the Huskies sent players from the bottom half of their lineup, freshman Derek Drabble advanced to both the singles and doubles finals. In the singles final, Drabble was narrowly defeated by USC's Jason McNaughton 6-7 (5), 7-6 (4), 6-4.

On the doubles side, Drabble and partner Andy Kuharszky defeated Stanford's Eric McKean and Dave Ryan to win the draw.

"Derek, Andy and Alex all had good weekends," Anger said. "Derek had a very tight match in singles, and a super weekend [HTML_REMOVED]he's been playing much better the last two weeks."

Also leaving Ojai with Pac-10 championship titles were Bruch in singles and Stanford's doubles team of Bruch and Blake Muller.

As the Huskies wait to hear which teams are named to the NCAA Championship, their results from the Pac-10 tournament will give them inspiration to work even harder in preparation.

"Overall, we continued what we'd been doing without a doubt," Anger said. "I think we're playing well, and I'm hoping we're playing well enough and consistently enough to get selected."

Reach reporter Risa Pavia at sports@thedaily.washington.edu.