ATHENS, Ga. “”mdash; On Feb. 26, the Bruins and Cardinal were scheduled to do battle.
Unfortunately, that match was rained out.
On April 3, the two teams got to face each other for the first time all season; Stanford defeated UCLA 4-3 in a razor thin decision.
Unfortunately, UCLA was missing two veteran players in senior Haythem Abid and junior Holden Seguso.
But Friday morning, as fate would have it, the UCLA (16-6) and Stanford (20-5) men’s tennis teams will have yet a third opportunity to go head-to-head, both teams at full strength and with no sign of rain for the NCAA round of 16.
UCLA enters the NCAA Championships as the No. 9 seed, while Stanford sits a step above the Bruins, seeded No. 8. But conventional wisdom maintains that seeding will matter little when these two Pac-10 foes take the court, seeing as how the blue and gold and the crimson and white face off on several different occasions every year.
And according to UCLA coach Billy Martin, who is somewhat accustomed to facing new opponents in the NCAA Tournament, the Bruins’ matchup with the Cardinal could turn out to be a gift and a curse.
“It’s probably a positive and a negative because you certainly know them, but on the other hand, they know you,” Martin said Thursday, as he watched the UCLA women’s team take on Duke in the Bruins’ round of 16 tilt. “There’s going to be very little surprises as far as how those guys play. It’s sort of just who’s going to go out and play the best tennis.”
In their April 3 match against the Cardinal, the Bruins were in the midst of a downward spiral of nagging injuries. Junior Holden Seguso was wearing a walking boot and senior mainstay Haythem Abid was battling a left wrist injury that has plagued him for the better part of two years.
With both Seguso and Abid out, the Bruins were up against the wall with a tough Cardinal team paying a visit to the Los Angeles Tennis Center.
The Bruins held their own, and had two match points that could have clinched the victory, before Stanford came back for the win. But Martin was adamant in expressing his delight to have Seguso and Abid back on the court for the match Friday.
“I hope a lot,” Martin said when asked how much presence of Seguso and Abid in the lineup will affect Friday’s match. “Mentally, we probably went out there real loose and didn’t feel like we had much of a chance, and they probably were maybe a little overconfident.”
Seguso reiterated his coach’s sentiments, commenting that he hopes that his return, as well as Abid’s, will give the team some much-needed confidence as a unit.
“I think the fact that we’re playing and we’re healthy will give the other players some confidence,” Seguso said. “But it’s all about how we go out there and fight.
“Now we can finally be the team that was supposed to be playing.”