Men’s tennis
Lamar Tuker, Daily Bruin staff

After losing Tuesday’s bout to the Trojans 4-3 – and subsequently getting swept by their crosstown rival in the season series – the Bruins will have a chance to get back in the win column when they head East.

UCLA men’s tennis (8-7, 6-1 Big Ten) will face No. 3 Ohio State (18-2, 7-0) on Friday at indoor Ty Tucker Tennis Center in Columbus, Ohio and Penn State (11-9, 0-7) on Sunday at Sarni Tennis Center in College Park, Pennsylvania.​

USC may have ended UCLA’s six-match win streak, but coach Billy Martin said he remains optimistic about the team’s trajectory.​

“We’ve lost matches, but they’ve all been relatively very close so I don’t feel we’re too far away,” Martin said. “If we can keep hanging in there and maybe get Spencer (No. 19 sophomore Spencer Johnson) back, I’m hopeful we can turn things around and win some of those really close matches.”​

Johnson – UCLA’s highest ranked singles player – hasn’t played since Feb. 2 due to injury.

While Tuesday’s loss knocked the Bruins off the Big Ten pedestal, their match against the first-place Buckeyes gives them a chance to get back on top. However, Ohio State will be UCLA’s highest-ranked opponent it’s faced this year, having lost to both then-No. 13 Texas A&M and then-No. 13 Stanford earlier in the season.

The Bruins are 5-4 vs. the Buckeyes with Martin at the helm, but the two haven’t played each other since 2018 and not once in Columbus, where the latter has an unblemished 11-0 record this year.

“We know that’s not going to be an easy match, and I’ve never coached there in all my 40-some years,” Martin said. “So it’ll be a new experience and learning curve for me.”

Redshirt sophomore Emon van Loben Sels earned Big Ten Player of the Week honors Wednesday after going 2-0 in singles and 3-0 in doubles – alongside partner junior Gianluca Ballotta – in UCLA’s matches against Oregon, Washington and USC. In fact, the tandem of Ballotta and van Loben Sels are 6-0 in doubles this year.

And against Ohio State, van Loben Sels said the match will come down to who plays more aggressively.

“They’re gonna be coming at us from the start,” van Loben Sels said. “So I think we need to battle harder and be there to win that.”​

Meanwhile, the Nittany Lions have dropped eight in a row and sit alone in the Big Ten cellar.

The Bruins are amid one of the most congested portions of their regular season, playing five matches between March 29 and April 6, the latter three all coming in enemy territory. But however many miles they may be from home, junior Aadarsh Tripathi says the team is just a few changes away from victory.

“We just won a lot of matches in a row, so it’s definitely tough playing away,” Tripathi said. “And we’ve had this in our hands and were right there in all the matches, but definitely a few things to tweak individually. And hopefully instead of being at 3-4, we can have it 4-3 for the next match.”​

Women’s tennis
Willa Campion, Daily Bruin contributor

It was snowing in the Twin Cities this week.

And in Madison, Wisconsin, there was sleet.

But in Los Angeles? The average temperature is predicted to be 70 degrees and sunny.

Coming off a weekend of Big Ten travel, No. 24 UCLA women’s tennis (8-7, 3-3 Big Ten) will have the opportunity to showcase their comfort playing in the warm weather when it hosts new conference foes No. 19 Wisconsin (14-1, 7-0) on Saturday and Minnesota (9-11, 1-6) on Sunday at the Los Angeles Tennis Center.

“We don’t know these teams very well,” said coach Stella Sampras Webster. “So we’re going to be doing some homework and research.”

The Bruins have dueled the Golden Gophers just three times in the last 20 years, serving up a 4-0 sweep thirce.

However, the Badgers – who likely pose the greater threat – have only faced the Bruins once in that same time frame, during the 2007 ITA National Team Indoor Championships. UCLA posted a 6-1 victory in that showing.

Where Wisconsin will have a competitive edge, if any, against the athletes of Westwood remains elusive as the two teams have only faced one common opponent thus far in the dual-match season – Illinois, which both beat 4-1.

The Badgers may boast No. 5 Maria Sholokhova, but have just two ranked singles players to the Bruins’ four. Meanwhile, the Golden Gophers’ squad features neither a ranked singles nor doubles player.

UCLA enters the weekend of back-to-back matches after blanking Penn State in State College, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.

“We’re not going to take any match lightly,” said senior Elise Wagle. “Coming off this win is good on the road and we’re happy to be back at home, especially at the start of the new quarter.”

While the Golden Gophers and the Badgers may only be just emerging from hibernation, the Bruins seem at home in the warm Westwood weather – evident by their 5-1 record on the courts of the Los Angeles Tennis Center.

“It’s going to be fun,” Wagle said.