After a week of adjustments and reflection due to a pair of losses suffered against ranked opponents, IU men’s tennis is seeking to bounce back this weekend.
IU will be host to Memphis at the IU Tennis Center on Friday before hitting the road to play Notre Dame on Sunday. Last season, the Fighting Irish got the best of the Hoosiers.
IU senior Matthew McCoy said his team is not discouraged after dropping matches against No. 17 Illinois and No. 15 Kentucky last weekend. He said the team performed well despite the losses.
“Overall, really we are just keeping our confidence and staying positive as a team,” McCoy said. “Memphis and Notre Dame are definitely very beatable teams and best thing we can do is staying positive.”
When the Hoosiers face off against the Tigers, it will be the seventh home match of the season for IU, which has only lost one — against Kentucky last weekend — of them thus far.
Memphis comes into the weekend with a 4-2 overall record and beat Big Ten foe Michigan State in the season opener.
Against No. 10 Northwestern and No. 18 Stanford, Memphis came up short on the road 4-0 and 4-3, respectively.
The Tigers have one ranked player in their singles lineup, junior Andrew Watson who is ranked No. 111 in the country.
“We know it is going to be a long night,” IU coach Jeremy Wurtzman said. “They are never going to shy away from competing, and we are going to have to finish them.”
IU will travel to Notre Dame on Sunday, where the Hoosiers lost 5-2 last season. Then-freshmen Antonio Cembellin and Afonso Salgado, playing at positions five and six singles, were the players who got the only two IU points of the matchup.
McCoy and junior Raheel Manji played in the matchup against Notre Dame as well but came up short at positions three and four singles, respectively.
This season the Fighting Irish are 6-3 overall and have won their only conference matchup. Five out of their six victories have been with a 7-0 score. However, Notre Dame was also defeated by Illinois and Kentucky with a score of 5-2 in both matchups.
Based on past performances against Notre Dame, as well as IU's relative success thus far in the season, Wurtzman said his team is confident.
“We have been fairly successful against them in some of our individual matches," Wurtzman said. "I think that is a team that we want to go in there and compete with.”
McCoy said a key for the team to come up on top in both matchups is being more aggressive with its play. He also said coaches have told them that against these kinds of teams they have to take more chances.
The Hoosiers will play the Tigers at 6 p.m. Friday at the IU Tennis Center. At noon two days later, they will play the Fighting Irish at the Eck Tennis Pavilion in South Bend, Indiana.
Wurtzman said the caliber of the opponents in IU's matches this weekend will help test and prepare his players for postseason play down the line.
“It is another great opportunity against two high-ranked opponents,” Wurtzman said. “Every match we are playing right now, we are playing teams that you would play in the NCAA Tournament, which is great.”
