Written by Sarah Bergstrom, USC blog contributor
The USC men's tennis team will face UCLA tomorrow (Marks Stadium at 3 p.m.) for the second time in one week. Coach Peter Smith knows this season marks the turning of an era but he also thinks his team is prepared to rise to the challenge.
The departure of Steve Johnson and Daniel Nguyen created a huge void for the USC men's tennis team at the beginning of the 2012-13 season. How do you replace a player with back-to-back NCAA Singles Championships and 72 consecutive singles victories? How do you replace a duo who helped contribute to four NCAA Team Championships? These questions followed the team into last weekend's ITA National Indoor Championships, where they lost in the title match to No. 1 Virginia.
"I think everybody had that question mark about us. The public had that question mark, our opponents had it. I think, even though it wasn't talked about in our locker room, that question was there. Last weekend we answered it," says head coach Peter Smith.
Smith says the most important goal through the beginning of this season has been finding an identity as a team. He knows the group is still in transition but he's impressed with the way the entire team has stepped up in the absence of Johnson and Nguyen.
"It was a total end of an era. But the entire team has really stepped up. Even though we've had a lot of success this year, we are still figuring things out. And to do as well as we did, it's great," Smith said.
It may only be the regular season, but the Trojans are preparing to
face their rival yet again tomorrow. It will be the second of
potentially four or more meetings this season.
It
was an impressive third-set tiebreaker win by sophomore Roberto Quiroz
that allowed the Trojans to beat UCLA 4-3. The match was tied 3-3 as
Quiroz and UCLA's Adrien Puget battled it out on court three. Quiroz
pulled through in a tiebreaker to clinch the final point, going 3-6,
6-3, and 7-6.
"I walked into the locker room
and said, 'Look, we already knew we had four guys who can win under this
amount of pressure, and now our other two proved they can as well.'"
As for tomorrow's match against the Bruins, Coach Smith says he expects it to be another battle.
"We've
got to play better doubles and I think we are going to make some
changes there. But really that's it. Tomorrow's just another step for
us. It's a chance to see how tough we are. We played them on Sunday,
beat them, now we've got to back it up."
There
are always questions in this rivalry but Smith believes the best way to
answer them is on the court. "Who's better indoors, who's better
outdoors, who's better at their place, who's better at ours? I don't
know. We just keep on answering questions. That's all we're going to
do."
Is the live court video going to be streaming for the UCLA match? It hasn't seem to be working yet all year. I'm a big fan living in Florida and love to follow and root for the men and women's team online. The Washington and Stanford live video feeds are awesome and was hoping we could match that standard.
Chris