The MSU men's tennis team played its best tennis of the conference season at the end of league play, and the Spartans hope to ride that momentum into the Big Ten tournament today.

"You can just tell by the way people are walking and carrying themselves and also in the way that they're playing," senior Chris Mitchell said.

The ninth-seeded Spartans (16-12 overall, 3-7 Big Ten) face the eighth-seeded Wolverines (13-8, 4-6) in the first round of the 2004 Big Ten Men's Tennis Championships today at 10 a.m. at the MSU Outdoor Courts, which are south of the Duffy Daugherty Football Building.

The Spartans got off to a rough start in league play, losing seven of their first eight matches, but since have rebounded, winning their last two.

Academic stress and the long season were reasons for the team's slide, Mitchell said.

"This is the first time since probably the middle of the season that we've really started to gel as a team again," he said. "We started the season off really strong and had a little lapse at the mid-point. We're finally starting to get it back together again. Hopefully, it'll carry us through the Big Ten tournament."

Head coach Gene Orlando credited the turnaround to his team's determination.

"We could've easily given up and we didn't," he said. "We just dug deep."

Orlando said playing intrastate rival Michigan in the first round of the tournament is "awesome."

"It's an opportunity for us to get a little revenge," he said.

The Spartans and Wolverines have split their last two matches. U-M beat MSU, 4-3, on March 31. Last season, the Spartans beat the Wolverines, 5-2.

"It was a rough loss last time," said junior Andrew Formanczyk, this week's Big Ten Player of the Week. "When we found out we were playing them, we wanted to be committed to beating them."

In his last two matches, Formanczyk went a combined 2-0 in singles play and 2-0 in doubles.

The Spartans are playing not only for state supremacy today. If they string a couple of wins together in the tournament, Orlando said they have an outside shot at an NCAA Tournament bid.

If MSU beats U-M, it will face undefeated Illinois, the No. 1 seed in the tournament.

"I think we're still a bubble team," Orlando said of the team's tournament hopes. "We're going to have to win two matches here to make it happen."

Matches will move to the MSU Indoor Tennis Facility in the case of inclement weather.