There’s still a sick feeling in No. 3 UCLA men’s tennis coach Billy Martin’s stomach when he recalls his team’s last meeting with No. 8 Baylor.
He hasn’t forgotten the way the Bears came in to the Los Angeles Tennis Center and celebrated a 4-3 victory last season.
“Gosh darn it, it makes me sick sometimes when you lose matches like that ““ when you feel like you have an incredibly good chance to win it,” Martin said. “You shouldn’t let those slip away.”
All the Bruins who experienced the devastating loss in less-than-perfect weather conditions also have vivid memories of the match in the back of their minds heading into Waco, Texas.
“We lost last year at home and we still have that in our minds,” sophomore Haythem Abid said.
“We lost to them at our place so we want to beat them at their place and stay undefeated as long as we can,” senior Philipp Gruendler said.
When the Bruins (5-0) take the courts of the Baylor Tennis Center to face the Bears (4-1) at noon this Saturday, it will be just the fifth overall meeting between the two teams, in what has become one of the most well-known matchups in the last several years.
The two teams met for the first time in the 2004 season at the Los Angeles Tennis Center with Baylor winning 5-2, and yet again in the same year in the NCAA Championship match. Once again, the Bears got the best of the Bruins, winning 4-0 to clinch the NCAA title.
Just one year later in 2005, the teams met again in the NCAA Championship match, with the Bruins getting the upper hand after a slow start, winning 4-3 to capture their first men’s tennis national title since 1984.
With last year’s loss at home, the Bruins are now a mere 1-3 against Baylor and are looking for some revenge when they take the courts against the Bears, who are coming off an upset loss suffered at the hands of No. 7 Florida.
“Even if they lost to Florida, that doesn’t mean anything: They’re going to be ready for us,” Abid said. “It’s going to be even harder to beat them because good teams don’t lose twice in a row.”
While UCLA has a nearly identical lineup to the one it used against Baylor last season, with the exception of the loss of Aaron Yovan at the No. 3 doubles position as he transferred to UC Irvine, Baylor has several new players the Bruins haven’t yet seen.
It was the Bear rookies, however, who held their own against Florida as the top three singles positions, filled by veterans, were all defeated by the Gators.
“Their veterans were the ones who all lost,” Martin said. “Who knows, maybe they were overlooking Florida thinking about our match.”
But the loss to the Gators could have provided Baylor with a fire and a desire to come out and prove they still belong near the top of the college tennis world, especially after falling from being ranked ahead of the Bruins to their current eighth-place position.
“They lost their last match against Florida, so they’ll be ready to play us because they don’t want to lose another match,” Abid said.
“Maybe that loss will work them up and that’s not what we really want right now,” Gruendler added.
That is probably one of the last things the Bruins want, especially knowing how hostile the environment will be as Baylor’s fans will be attempting to do nearly anything to get into the heads of UCLA players on all courts.
And while many of those fans may consider this matchup as one of the top rivalries in college tennis, Martin and his Bruins still don’t see it as such, especially since it is only recently becoming a big match for both teams.
“It can’t surpass, in my mind, USC or Stanford yet, just because of the longevity and the multiple, multiple bitter losses and great wins,” Martin said. “Baylor has done a great job recently, but they’re still a young power.”
“I never really saw the rivalry, I just heard about it,” Gruendler added. “I don’t really see it as a rivalry.”