With the ITA Indoor Qualifying Tournament coming up this weekend, UCLA men’s tennis coach Billy Martin has some bulletin-board material to fire up his team.
“These teams picked to come here to play us because they must feel that we are beatable, and as a competitor myself that brings up a little of my competitive juices,” Martin said.
“If they feel we are beatable, then let them bring it on.”
Alabama, Fresno State and UC Irvine will be the schools competing with the Bruins for a spot in the USTA/ITA National Team Indoors, which is held during February in Virginia.
On Saturday, UCLA will take on Alabama while Fresno State will play UC Irvine. The winners of these matches will meet on Sunday to determine who gets to go to Virginia.
“It’s a sudden death. So, if we lose this weekend, we don’t get to go to Indoors,” redshirt senior Nick Meister said.
“That’s a little added pressure and it’s going to be good to see how everybody rises to that challenge.”
Martin hopes that his players recognize that the competition they will see this weekend will be tougher than what they have seen so far.
“The doubles will be stiffer competition and the lineups will be stronger,” Martin said. “We are going to have to play some of our best stuff.”
A key point that the players emphasized is that they need to stay focused and be ready mentally.
“The key is to stay focused on every point, on every shot and try to play our best. That’s all we can really do,” redshirt junior Alex Brigham said.
“The key is to have that killer instinct … (to) play every point like it’s our last.”
The Bruins received a boost to the singles lineup against UC Irvine earlier this week in sophomore Adrien Puget, who had not played singles since the fall because of a knee injury.
“For us to be our best team, we need Adrien playing and playing fairly high in our lineup. If he’s feeling good like he is and bugging me about wanting to play singles also, that’s a real positive sign to get him into our lineup,” Martin said.
“For us to really be a contender, we need Adrien Puget in that lineup probably playing (in the) top four or somewhere.”
Puget admits that he is still rounding himself into shape, but he is getting better every day and looks forward to helping his team win.
“I’m going to try to do my best as usual and I think we have a pretty good chance to win both matches, so we will see how it goes,” Puget said.
Martin knows that his players will give it their all as they attempt to secure a spot in the February tournament.
“These (players) are competitors and don’t like to lose and won’t want to lose, and that’s going to bring out the best in them.”