With little danger of an upset when the No. 4 UCLA men’s tennis team hosts San Diego today, the Bruins will be using their second dual match of the season to adjust to the format of team play and prepare for more rigorous matches next week.
“It will be a good match for us to keep building and get ourselves tougher for the following week, where we have three really tough matches,” coach Billy Martin said. “I’m hoping this match will get us a little more acclimated to the team format, where we play doubles first. I’m expecting a challenge, but I don’t think it will be an overly tough match.”
UCLA holds a 22-0 all-time advantage over the Toreros, including a 5-2 victory in last year’s season-opener. San Diego returns to the Los Angeles Tennis Center after a solid 15-6 season last year, but graduated several top seniors.
Although the Bruins’ experienced lineup will be facing a young San Diego squad, UCLA knows it cannot overlook any team.
“There is no way we won’t come out strong,” senior Benjamin Kohlloeffel said. “Even though we might not be playing the best team in the nation, we still have to focus; otherwise we will definitely lose. We are all ready to get this part of the season really started.”
In the No. 1 match, Kohlloeffel will try to avoid last year’s outcome, in which he suffered one of only four defeats for the season against San Diego’s Pierrick Ysern.
With Ysern graduated, South African player Chris Coetzee will likely match up against Kohlloeffel.
“(Coetzee) has really come along and improved quite a bit,” Martin said. “I expect Ben to win, but he’s going to give him a good match.”
Though UCLA will be focusing on San Diego today, the team sees the main goals of the match as getting into dual-match mode for its upcoming matches. After participating only in individual events during the fall and then taking a four-week winter break, the team is still a little rusty.
“We need these early matches to get in shape and get into the habit of playing other teams and not only practicing or playing on our own,” Kohlloeffel said.
The Bruins will need to be fully prepared when they host San Diego State, Cal and Stanford next week, and consider today’s matchup a good way to hone their skills for harder opponents.
“There are a lot of little things that we will be working on this week, but we’re not going to try to change anything big in anyone’s games at this point in time,” Martin said.
UCLA might see senior Chris Surapol in singles play today after he sat out the singles portion of last week’s match against UC Irvine with a slight case of tendinitis in his shoulder, but Martin is cautious to use the team captain before his shoulder is fully healed.
“Chris’ shoulder is certainly coming along well, but we don’t need to rush it,” Martin said. “We need to have him fully ready to go the following week.”