AU ROUNDUP: Cielo takes fourth gold medal

Special to the News

Published: May 11, 2008

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Auburn’s Cesar Cielo wrapped up the Brazilian Olympic Trials on Sunday, winning his fourth gold medal in the five-day event.

Cielo, a native of St. Barbara, Brazil, swam the anchor leg on the winning 400m medley relay that set a new meet record with a time of 3:19.52.

The 19-time All-American and 10-time NCAA Champion also swam in the 100m freestyle, winning his fifth medal of the meet, taking the bronze with a time of 49.98.

The qualifying meet is a formality for Cielo as he is already qualified for the Brazilian National Team that will travel to Beijing in August for the 2008 Olympics.

Men’s tennis falls to UGA in NCAA Tournament
ATHENS, Ga. — For the second year in a row, the Auburn men’s tennis team season ended at the hands of the Georgia, as the Tigers fell, 4-0, to the Bulldogs on Sunday in the second round of the NCAA Tournament at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex.

Auburn ends the season with an 11-13 record, while UGA improves to 23-3.

The Bulldogs move on to play either Pepperdine or Stanford in the NCAA Tournament “Sweet 16” in Tulsa, Okla. Georgia also knocked the Tigers out of the 2007 NCAA Tournament second round by an identical 4-0 margin.

Despite the 4-0 score, Auburn battled through a tough match on Georgia’s home turf, earning a win in a doubles match and taking some singles matches to three sets.

“This was a close match and you have to look inside the match at the two tiebreakers in the first set with Alexey Tsyrenov and Tim Puetz in singles and the final doubles going down to it at 8-6,” said head coach Eric Shore. “Terence Nugent took his match to three, Pawel Dilaj played two tough sets and Lukas Marsoun really battled in his match. We gave them a battle and you have to look outside of the 4-0 score to see it.”

Coming into the match as the underdog, Shore said he was very proud of his team for showing up ready to play against the defending national champion.

“I thought we battled today,” said Shore. “We had our chance in doubles and that is what you have to do, you have to put the favorite in a position where they feel you coming. We read about their contest to see who could finish the match first and we took it to heart a little bit and we battled them extremely hard all day.

“They are a good team, I was proud of my guys, proud of our effort yesterday and thought we came back and did a really good job today.”