Fresh off the excitement of making the NCAA tournament, No. 42 Northwestern got back to business and began practicing to defeat it toughest opponent: itself.
“Honestly, I don’t know anything about Wake Forest,” freshman Tobias Reitz said. “I don’t really care either. As long as we keep doing what we’ve been doing so far and keep playing our game, no matter who we play, I think we should be fine.”
Despite Reitz’s confidence in his team, a win over No. 18 Wake Forest today would mark the highest-ranked opponent the Wildcats have beaten this season. During the regular season, NU nearly beat then-No. 7 Illinois, then-No. 20 Arizona and then-No. 25 Notre Dame, but lost all three matches 4-3.Fighting hard against highly-ranked non-conference opponents has given the Cats confidence that they will need to compete with – and defeat – the Demon Deacons.
“By playing tight matches with (top teams), we showed that we can compete with any team in the country,” sophomore Andrew McCarthy said. “The Big Ten speaks for itself. For us to compete in the Big Ten and have a winning record is tremendous because of how competitive it is.”
Another indicator of NU’s chances against Wake Forest is the Big Ten matches the Demon Deacons have already played this season. Wake Forest lost to Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ohio State, while winning at Michigan. The Cats went 2-2 against the same teams in the regular season, knocking off the Badgers and Golden Gophers, but losing to the Buckeyes and Wolverines.
“It certainly shows that we’ll have a chance against them,” coach Arvid Swan said. “At the same time, Wake has beaten so many quality teams throughout this year. They’re ranked (in the) top-25 for a reason. We know we’re going to have to play great to beat them.”
Team members said they hope the result will be different from the Big Ten tournament, in which NU was ousted by Michigan in its first match. Although the Cats are young, there have been a higher frequency of close matches than most teams experience in a season. Swan said that experience, combined with the Big Ten tournament, will help the freshmen handle the pressure of playing on college tennis’ biggest stage.
“I think playing at the Big Ten tournament helped them out,” Swan said. “They’ve also had so much experience playing in close matches this year. If you looked at Division-I tennis teams, I doubt you’d find another program with more 4-3 matches over the course of the year.”
While the players and coaches were excited after narrowly making the NCAA tournament field, the Cats are not settling for just being invited. Swan said he is not trying to take anything away from his first NCAA tournament as a coach – other than wins.
“It’s great to make the NCAA tournament but we’re trying to go there and compete and try to win,” Swan said. “Making the NCAA tournament as a program was important because it was a goal we had at the beginning of the year. We completed that goal, but our next goal is to win the first match against Wake Forest. We’re trying to keep the program going forward.”
McCarthy said even if the team loses in the tournament, it will have been a great season because of the tremendous improvement from last year to this year. Nevertheless, his mindset is that the team has a lot of tennis left to play.
“Even though we’ve done so well so far this year, I’m looking at it as that we’re still in the middle of the season,” McCarthy said. “There’s a lot of work ahead of us. Even though we’ve accomplished a lot from last year to this year, we still have a chance to be even better than we anticipated.”
