On the edge of a string. That’s the way the UCLA tennis team survived throughout the 2010-2011 season, as it yo-yoed through a myriad of ups and downs with one of the youngest and most inexperienced rosters in recent memory.

The last time the UCLA men’s tennis team played Baylor to a tense 4-3 win in Waco, Tex., the Bears’ season took a drastic turn.

After a long, grueling season filled with tense dual matches, UCLA coach Billy Martin is looking forward to a weekend where he can relax and take in some quality tennis without having to strategize and game-plan for every potential outcome.

Tearing himself away from the raucous crowd in a match oozing with emotion, Amit Inbar savored his last victory against his archrival, with his teammates and coach on court in front of the Bruin faithful.

A year after his program’s first loss in history to the Arizona Wildcats, senior captain Amit Inbar had one message for his Bruin squad heading into Friday’s contest with Arizona.

Facing the prospect of losing yet another tight doubles point against another top team, the UCLA men’s tennis team’s No. 1 tandem of Alex Brigham and Adrien Puget mustered up enough to win the point against Washington Friday.

If this weekend’s matches were going to serve as a telling moment in the UCLA men’s tennis team’s season, they told the story of a young team coming up short.

This weekend’s contests also revisited an issue which has plagued the Bruins all season: their inability to win in doubles. This once again placed them in an early hole in both of their matches, a 4-3 loss to Cal on Friday and a 6-1 loss to Stanford on Saturday.

As the UCLA men’s tennis team travels to take on California and Stanford this weekend, it faces a critical junction in its season, where each point of each match gains increasing importance and may potentially alter the Bruins’ Pac-10 title aspirations.

On the heels of two season-defining matches, the UCLA men’s tennis team had just one hurdle in the form of Loyola Marymount, a team the Bruins handily defeated on Tuesday at the Los Angeles Tennis Center by a score of 6-1.

Coming off of two straight defeats to rivals California and USC, and having lost three of its past four matches, the UCLA men’s tennis team looked to stem the tide against unranked Hawai’i on Friday, and efficiently did so.