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Men's tennis finds top form on road
Bishop and Baumann head weekend charge, extend winning streak to seven matches; Huskies gear up for fast-approaching NCC tournament
A four-game winning streak appeared to be coming to an end Friday evening for the SCSU men's tennis team after they dropped all three doubles matches to host St. Olaf.
Normally, if a team wins all three doubles matches they would receive three points. However, St. Olaf and the Huskies were playing only a seven-point match where whichever team wins the best out of three in doubles play would receive only one point.
The one point was all St. Olaf ended up getting as SCSU woke up in singles action to win the contest, 6-1.
Igniting SCSU's comeback was the team's number-one player, Todd Bishop, as he gained a straight set victory, 7-5, 6-3. Bryan Baumann then followed with a dominant win at number two singles, 6-1, 6-2.
"We started slow," SCSU head coach Jerry Anderson said. "Todd (Bishop) and Bryan (Baumann) really stepped it up for us, though."
Bishop and Baumann stepping up would be a recurring theme on Saturday as the Huskies knocked off a tough University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh squad, 6-3. In addition to wins by the aforementioned Bishop and Baumann, SCSU saw a strong performance from Josh Lunak at number four singles. Casey Haselwander narrowly fell at number three singles, 3-6, 7-5, 8-1.
Bishop began the Huskies' final match of the weekend against Winona State by handing Winona State's number one singles player, Mike Lipinski, only his fifth loss of the season, 7-5, 6-2.
The rest of the Huskies also played strongly, including an ailing Lunak, who was limited to only playing doubles due to a hard fall in the match against UW-Oshkosh. When all was said and done, SCSU upended the Warriors, 8-1.
"Overall, we played really well," Bishop said. "We had three really convincing wins and were also fortunate to have nice weather."
The Huskies have now won seven in a row and find themselves at 19-6 with only one week remaining in the regular season. It will be a busy week as the Huskies will face St. John's University on Tuesday, Colorado College on Thursday, a pair of Friday matches against Augustana and Hamline before finishing up the regular season Saturday versus Minnesota State, Mankato.
"We need to take one match at a time and try not to look ahead," Bishop said of the team's full schedule. "We need to also enjoy playing a lot matches."
Anderson added: "We just need to keep playing steady. It's also key to keep building confidence in our doubles as we head into the conference tourney."
If there has been an area of concern for the Huskies all season, it would be in doubles play. Although the team has played well in doubles all year long, there is still plenty of room to improve.
Recent shuffles in the doubles line-up such as teaming Bishop with Bob Skenzich and Baumann with Lunak have proven to be effective for Coach Anderson. This next week will be used to fine-tune the relatively new pairings for the NCC Tournament.
"We're starting to get in a groove and a rhythm with our partners," Bishop said. "We're making good strides. We beat some good teams this weekend and it improved our confidence."
All five of the Huskies' matches will be at home this week. The Tuesday match against SJU is slated for a 4 p.m. start outside at the Halenbeck tennis courts. The other four matches are scheduled to be played inside of Gold's Gym Tennis Center in Sartell, but Anderson noted that those matches may also be moved outdoors.
Adam Czech can be reached at: [email protected]
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