ONLINE EXTRA: Men’s Tennis

By Greg Schain
Daily Bruin Reporter

Two weeks ago, Stanford and Cal marched into the Los Angeles
Tennis Center and promptly handed UCLA its first back-to-back home
losses in well over two decades.

Although the Bruins were shorthanded for those matches, they
were still angry about the losses.

“When we play Cal and Stanford in two weeks, we are going
to kill them,” said team captain Erfan Djahangiri at the
time.

The two week waiting period expires this afternoon when the No.
2 Bruins, who are back at full strength, take the court against a
tough Stanford team, and an even tougher Stanford crowd.

Cardinal fans are typically the harshest and rowdiest fans in
the country. Sophomore Tobias Clemens, who was out due to an injury
but attended last year’s match at Palo Alto, remembers his
teammates being heckled throughout the match.

“The guys were really slaughtered last year,” he
said. “Everyone was screaming, and people were making fun of
Marcin (Matkowski’s) name.”

But some players like the fact that the crowd is loud.
Specifically Lassi Ketola, who said he likes the big-time
atmosphere for tennis matches at Stanford.

“It is nice to play when everything is so intense,”
Ketola said. “And you really want to win when you take so
much heat.”

If the Bruins win both matches this weekend, they will return
home as Pac-10 champions. The team hasn’t won the conference
title since 1999.

UCLA is 5-0 in the Pac-10, tied with Stanford and a game in
front of 4-1 USC. Even though UCLA has lost to USC, Stanford and
Cal this season, those matches didn’t count in the Pac-10
standings.

But this weekend’s matches do count, so a win against
Stanford will guarantee at least a share of the Pac-10 title. A
weekend sweep would clinch it.

“I’d like to know that we were the strongest team in
our conference,” UCLA head coach Billy Martin said.

These are the last dual matches of the year for the Bruins, and
they probably need at least one win to solidify their ranking going
into the NCAA Championships.

It is their goal to end the year in the top four, because that
guarantees that UCLA will play one of the weakest four teams in the
tournament.

The brackets for the tennis championships don’t work like
typical tournament brackets, where the No. 1 plays the No. 16, the
No. 2 plays the No. 15, etc. But rather, any team ranked No. 1
through No. 4 plays a randomly drawn team ranked between No. 13 and
No. 16.

“As long as we are in the top four, it doesn’t
matter,” Martin said. “That will make the first round
of the NCAA’s a lot easier for us.”