Veteran squad aims for the top

Entering the NCAA Championships as one of the most experienced and deep teams in the field, the No. 9 UCLA men’s tennis team sees this year as a chance to make it back to the top of the tennis world. After capturing the championship in 2005, the Bruins are poised to do it again, but are not looking too far ahead of themselves.

UCLA (19-3) will take on the University of Nevada Las Vegas (13-13) in the first round of the NCAA Championships today at the Los Angeles Tennis Center, as the Bruins earned the right to host by finishing in the top 16.

“I don’t know their team that well,” UCLA coach Billy Martin said of the Rebels. “It’ll be sort of a team that we don’t know a whole lot about, which always worries me as a coach.”

But what the Bruins do know is that the Rebels won the Mountain West Conference Championship to earn an at”“large bid in their first tournament since 1999.

This year’s Bruin squad is full of six players who have all been part of at least one appearance in the postseason, something that captain Chris Surapol feels will be a huge advantage for the Bruins as they attempt to fulfill their season-long goal.

“This year we don’t have to worry about people adjusting,” he said. “We just have less and less distractions and that comes with age. Nobody should be thinking too much about what (you) need to do for the team as opposed to just doing what you need to on your own court.”

If they get past UNLV, the Bruins would then have to worry about the winner of a match that could go either way between Virginia Commonwealth University and Texas Tech in a second-round matchup on Saturday afternoon.

Though the Bruins are approaching the postseason with a great goal in mind, Martin is also aware that the season can end on any given day if his team doesn’t show the focus he feels it is capable of demonstrating.

“I’m hopeful that we won’t have those jitters that those younger teams might have, especially when it’s a do-or-die situation,” Martin said. “There’s no Saturday if we don’t win (today) and there’s no Georgia if we don’t win on Saturday.”

And though the Bruins are entering the tournament riding a great wave of momentum after a solid season, Surapol understands that he and his teammates will have a chance to determine the true accomplishments of the season in the next few weeks.

“You want to be hot going into the tournament for sure, but you can’t for a second even let it get to you,” Surapol said. “Because if you lose early in the tournament, you just have an average season. We’re feeling good about ourselves and about our chances.”

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