In a tale of two days, Northwestern once again split its matches over the weekend.
Saturday was a gorgeous day, which produced gorgeous results for the Wildcats, as the team picked up a 6-1 win against Purdue (7-13, 2-6 Big Ten).
Sunday was a different story.
The weather took a turn for the worse and pushed the match indoors for the singles portion of the competition. But while the Cats lost to No. 5 Illinois (17-5, 7-1) 6-1, they played some of the best tennis of the season.
The singles matches were very strong for the Cats (11-9, 5-4) on both days. NU swept the singles competition Saturday without dropping a set to the Boilermakers.
Sophomore Juan Gomez played excellent tennis and won his match by being consistent, with a little flare added for the crowd.
While Gomez was playing on the middle court and further from the crowd’s view, he made artistic shots that left the audience at the Vandy Christie Tennis Center with wide-open mouths.
“My strategy coming in was to make the points long,” Gomez said, “and I was able to do that.”
The outdoor courts were playing slower than the indoor ones the team usually practices on, which suits Gomez, who grew up playing on clay.
The Cats’ doubles teams struggled against both opponents, losing four of six matches over the weekend. The bright spot for the team was the duo of junior Matt Christian and senior captain Adam Schaechterle, who won both of their matches to give the Cats the doubles point Saturday and knocked off the No. 4 doubles team in the country Sunday.
“We are surging at the end of the year because we trust each other,” Schaechterle said. “Neither one of us has to be the hero, we have helped each other and learned to compete as a team.”
Christian and Schaechterle played even with the Illini for the first eight games but went on a 4-2 run to win 8-6 to continue their four-match winning streak.
In addition to the doubles upset, junior Christian Tempke came within one point of beating No. 3 Ryler DeHeart at No. 1 singles. After winning the first set in a tiebreak, Tempke lost the second set but gained a 5-3 lead in the third set before losing in tiebreak to end the match, 6-7 (5), 6-1, 7-6 (0) in DeHeart’s favor.
“I played my best tennis, moved a lot around the ball and hit the ball really hard,” Tempke said. “Unfortunately, I got really tired after the second set and had to fight with cramps in the third set.”
Tempke’s loss came a day after he vastly outplayed his opponent in singles. His strong ground strokes overpowered the Boilermakers’ Colin Foster en route to a 6-2, 6-2 Cats win.
“I thought they would be stronger,” Tempke said. ” I got to play the way I wanted, and as a plus, the weather (was) great.”
The loss to Illinois may have hurt the Cats’ hope for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament with their near .500 record, both overall and in the conference.
“(The loss) doesn’t change anything,” coach Paul Torricelli said. “You can’t gauge good effort. You need to win.”
Still, the win left the team feeling confident about playing against a top team in the country with a relatively young team.
“We have a young group of guys who have never been this far in a collegiate season,” Torricelli said. “Alexey (Evstratenkov), Juan and Marc (Dwyer) have done a great job for us so far.”
Reach Brian Regan at [email protected].
