CU smashes tennis team
The meet was going so well – the Utah State women’s tennis team had won two of the three doubles matches 8-1 and 8-5 to take the early lead.
But Colorado State was able to sweep the singles matches to win six points to one Thursday night in Logan.
“We made a really awesome start with the doubles,” Utah State Head Coach Christian Wright said. “[In the singles matches] we had our opportunities and we played well, they just made fewer unforced errors.”
Lindsey Bennion and Carolyn Stephens won the last six games of their No. 1 doubles match to win 8-1. The No. 3 doubles pair of Jill Smith and Lauren Monson also won 8-5.
At No. 2 doubles the two teams were on serve until the Aggies double-faulted on break point to give the Rams a 4-3 lead. The Rams went on to win the match 8-5.
At No. 2 singles Smith led 3-2 in the first set after two breaks. But she couldn’t close it out as she lost 6-4 and 6-1. USU’s Erin Manning was up 5-1 in her second set after losing 6-2 in the first. Manning ended up losing the set and the match 7-5.
“They did a very good job of closing out points,” Wright said. “That’s where our unforced errors occurred. We worked the points well but when we came in to finish off the point we made a lot of errors.”
Some of the problems in the singles matches came from starting off slowly. It was a problem that plagued the Aggies as 75 percent of the sets in their singles matches started with a break of serve.
Seventy-five percent of the time the Rams would also hold serve the very next game to give them a 2-0 lead in at least six sets that were played at the Sports Academy.
Bennion lost her No. 1 singles match 6-3, 6-3. Monson was beat 6-1, 6-2 while Andrea Barker also lost 6-3, 6-2. Stephens lost 6-3, 6-3 in her singles match.
“Sometimes we were just a little bit impatient,” Wright said. “We just have to not beat ourselves.”
The Aggies have basically spent the last month on the road, traveling to Oregon, Hawaii and Nevada in the past few weeks.
Over the next month the Aggies will only travel to Boise and Weber State before they head to Indian Wells, Calif., for the Big West Conference Tournament.
Since travel won’t be a problem anymore, Wright said it was time to focus on fundamentals and to get things going consistently.
“We have to try and not do things fancy or extra,” Wright said. “We just have to hit basic shots.”
Coming into the game the Aggies were 6-7 on the season while Colorado State was 8-2.
The Aggies will face Weber State this Tuesday at the Sports Academy and the Harris Research Facility in Logan.
-krn@cc.usu.edu