The men’s tennis team will get some much-needed time off as the team gears up for the rest of the season. The Spartans have 12 games remaining, 10 of which are Big Ten meets. If the team hopes to make the NCAA tournament it will need to fair well in Big Ten play.
“It really comes down to (we’ve) got to have a solid Big Ten season, flat out,” head coach said. “We’re going to have to go (8-3 or 7-4) if we want to have a chance, and then have a good Big Ten tournament. There’s opportunities in the Big Ten but we’ve got to take it one at a time.”
The team returns to play March 12 against Texas for one of its final non-conference games of the season. The only other remaining non-conference game comes against Detroit on March 22, a day in which the Spartans travel to Ohio State and play the Buckeyes at noon and then must return to Michigan to take on the Titans at 8 p.m.
The Spartans were the clear favorites against Youngstown State, but nonetheless a dominating 6-0 win has to be encouraging to the team heading into the break. The theme surrounding the team as of late has been good play but not good enough to earn a win.
“We’re setting ourselves up for next week of practice (and) for spring break. You just want to have the right mindset, you want to finish right, from that standpoint (the win over Youngstown State), it sets us on the right path,” Orlando said.
MSU has gotten off to strong starts, winning the doubles point their last four games, but before the win over Youngstown State the Spartans lost three straight despite taking doubles.
The team will look to get off to a stronger start in singles matches as the Spartans in the losses have often found themselves dropping the first set in singles, a challenging hole to dig themselves out of.
“We’ve (got to) have better starts in singles. We get down and then we come back in the second sets and we make it a match,” Orlando said. “If we get off to better starts we all of a sudden we don’t let them win a match.”
Freshman Jasper Koenen, who is a perfect 9-0 in doubles play this season with his partner senior Doug Zade, acknowledged that the team must get off to better starts in singles play.
“We need to get a little better at starting well and getting the first sets in singles,” Koenen said. “A lot of these teams, they lose five out of the six first sets on all these courts. They kind of fall and it’s over, but we always find a way to win second sets and find a way to make it close. ... That’s something to learn from moving forward.”
