The UCLA women’s tennis team has recently had a harder
time battling harsh weather conditions than battling opponents.
But weather will be the least of the No. 10 Bruins’
worries this weekend as they take on two of the best teams in the
country: No. 1 Stanford and No. 13 California.
The Bruins will travel to the Bay Area for Friday and Saturday,
where they will take on the teams in a set of conference dual
matches.
“Those are two good quality teams, and we’re going
to have to keep the momentum we have after winning some tough
Pac-10 matches to get the results we want,” senior Laura
Gordon said.
In the Bruins’ prior meetings with their instate rivals,
UCLA was able to defeat the Bears by a narrow 4-3 margin but lost
to the Cardinal 6-0.
Stanford is carrying into the battle a 73-match winning streak,
which extends back to April 18, 2003, when the Cardinal lost 4-3 to
Florida in the national championship match.
The Cardinal captured back-to-back national titles since then
and are looking to clinch their third-straight this season, already
posting an undefeated 18-0 mark in nonconference play and a 5-0
mark in Pac-10 matches.
This year, however, the Cardinal have had greater struggles
putting away their opponents, and the Bruins feel that they have
perhaps their best chance since the 2004 national championship
match to give Stanford a run for its money.
“Right now, this year especially, that there isn’t
as much of a gap between Stanford and other teams as there has been
in the past,” sophomore Elizabeth Lumpkin said.
“They’re not as dominating as they used to
be.”
Stanford is coming off a narrow victory over Pepperdine, to
which UCLA suffered its first loss by a mere 4-3.
With that in mind, the Bruins understand that they must convert
all their opportunities against the national powerhouse to keep the
match within reach.
“We just need to have everyone fight it out,”
Lumpkin said. “What we learned from last time is that the
biggest difference is when we have opportunities to win big sets or
points, we need to capitalize on them.”
In the last meeting against the defending champions, the Bruins
suffered what appeared to be a blowout 6-0 loss.
When examined more closely, however, the match seems much closer
than the final score indicates.
UCLA was at the wrong end of three matches that went into three
sets on courts No. 1, 2 and 6.
The match was similar to the one against Cal on Feb. 19. In that
match, however, the Bruins were able to win all the close points
and clinched the upset when Lumpkin won the final set for the
Bruins.
The Bruins realize they are going to have to play at a similar
level and capture all the close opportunities given to them,
including the all-important doubles point.
“We know we can win at least three singles matches so the
doubles point is going to be really big for us to get off on the
right foot,” Lumpkin added.