M. Tennis Blanked Out West

Well, the weather was nice.

The Harvard men's tennis team had hoped for much more, however, over its five-match spring break trip to California.

The Crimson--coming off an encouraging performance at the Corpus Christi Tournament March 3-5--was hoping to knock off some of its highly ranked opponents out west.

Unfortunately for the Crimson, the trip did not prove as fruitful as they'd hoped with Harvard dropping, all five of its matches--4-3 to Boise State, 4-3 to South Alabama, 5-2 to Southern California, 5-2 to Pepperdine and 7-0 to UCLA.

"We didn't expect to go 0-5, but the team performed well," freshman Philip Tseng said. "We played some high quality tennis against top teams so it wasn't too disappointing."

The Crimson (9-6) had its best chance for victory against Boise State, which came into the contest ranked behind Harvard in the national poll.

After dropping the doubles point, the Crimson could only muster a split of the singles matches. Freshman Philip Tseng, freshman Tom Blake and Chung recorded wins for Harvard at the second, fourth and fifth singles, respectively.

"The loss to Boise State was really disappointing," junior Dan Chung said.

Matters didn't figure to get any easier against South Alabama, the 10th-ranked team in the nation. Harvard again captured three of singles matches but again lost the doubles point to give South Alabama the victory.

The Crimson next faced off against another Top 10 team, Southern California, but came up on the short side of the 5-2 score. Blake managed a win for the Crimson at fourth singles, and Harvard won the first and second doubles matches to garner the doubles point. Against Pepperdine, only captain Andrew Rueb at second singles and Chung at fifth singles won their matches. Pepperdine garnered the 5-2 victory even though its first singles player was out of the line-up.

The final match of the long week, against fifth-ranked UCLA, was no closer than the 7-0 score indicates.

"UCLA killed us," Blake said. "They were better than us at every position. They're a really good team."

The limited success against Southern California, Pepperdine and UCLA, however, was more indicative of the strength of the California teams than any particular weakness in the Crimson. With the California squads representing the cream of the NCAA men's tennis crop, Harvard got a taste of men's tennis that no teams in the east could give it.

"They're the best in the country out there," Blake said. "We don't see teams like that here. If we make the NCAAs we'll be better prepared because of this trip."

Before the Crimson can think about possibly qualifying for the NCAAs later this spring, however, it'll have to deal with its Ivy League foes.

Friday, the Crimson opens it's league schedule at home against Columbia. The Lions defeated the Crimson last year at New York and went on to win the Ivy crown.

"Everybody's looking for a little revenge," Blake said.

"It's going to be a really tough match," Chung said. "They just beat Miami, and they're playing really well."

Saturday the Crimson faces Pennsylvania, and while the Crimson is certainly not hoping for California-like competition, it wouldn't mind some of the California weather.

"The weather was perfect every day," Blake said.

"There wasn't a cloud in the sky all week," Tseng said.