After a great victory against Stony Brook, the UConn women’s tennis team continues their season with a double-meet weekend, taking on Long Island University on Friday at 4 p.m. in Bethpage, New York, and Seton Hall University on Sunday at 10:30 a.m at the Magic Lincer Tennis Club in Manchester, Connecticut.
Last Friday, the Huskies dominated for the majority of the matches. Despite losing the 1-singles match, they cruised through most of the rest of the matchups. 3- and 4-singles as well all as the doubles matches went mostly UConn’s way, but 2-singles was hard fought, with German sophomore Leonie Hoppe pulling out the victory after three sets that went the distance, going to extra games and tiebreakers. Though not having that sweep of the Stony Brook Seawolves is unfortunate, it proves that this team has depth to carry them through the season.
The first of their upcoming matchups is the LIU Sharks, who are coming off a rough 0-7 sweep at the hands of the University of Delaware last Sunday. Though their overall team performance was poor, their singles showing was especially bad, with no singles match going to three sets. Prior to that loss, however, the Sharks had a three-game winning streak, winning four of six matches. That goes to show the nature of the tennis season, and that some days a group could come out flat out of nowhere despite their record. LIU will likely be looking to put their most recent struggle behind them when they welcome UConn to New York.
Their second opponent for this weekend will be Seton Hall, who will start Sunday with a 5-2 record, having won five of their last six. Their most recent two wins have been impressive: a 7-0 sweep of Binghamton University, where their three doubles teams only lost three total games, and a 6-1 win over Monmouth University, where they won all of their singles matches. They have great team chemistry as well as some talented singles players that can make play difficult for the Huskies. However, their match against UConn will be their third of the weekend after road trips to Providence College and the University of Massachusetts, so it’ll be interesting to see if fatigue plays a factor come Sunday.
Overall, this weekend is shaping up to be a gauntlet of tough opponents. This is the kind of weekend where we’ll see the true colors of the Huskies, and perhaps good showings in these two meets will inspire confidence for the rest of the season.
