Syracuse tennis head coach Luke Jensen is certainly one to praise his team and said the Orange is always the best squad on the court. But this weekend, he came to the realization that his team is not as confident as he is.

‘The coaching staff needs to brainwash them that they can handle the pressure and the competition and that they can play with anyone,’ Jensen said. ‘They knew DePaul and Marquette were good opponents, and they didn’t know how they stacked up and that was the first step of the downfall of this weekend.’

Syracuse had a disappointing weekend at its second and third stop of a seven-game road tour. SU’s record dropped to .500 and suffered its first two Big East losses, falling to DePaul, 6-1, Saturday and again to Marquette, 5-2, on Sunday.

DePaul (9-3, 2-0) swept the doubles play and won five of the six singles matches. The Orange (6-6, 4-2) received its lone point against DePaul from Maria Vasilyeva at the No. 4 position. Vasilyeva also won her singles match vs. Robin Metzler of Marquette (4-7, 1-0), tallying her eighth singles win of the season, tying teammate Ashley Spicer for the team best.

Jensen switched the lineup again, but this time in the singles play. Ashley Spicer moved to No. 3, and Chelsea Jones switched to No. 5. Both Spicer and Jones lost their matches at their new positions. Spicer’s loss ended a four-game winning streak.

Syracuse appears to lack confidence away from its home court, the Drumlins Country Club, tallying a record of 2-6 on the road. The Orange has four more games on the road before another home match. Included in that stretch is a contest against last year’s Big East tournament champion, South Florida.

‘We can play with teams like DePaul and South Florida,’ Jensen said. ‘Sure, the final score against DePaul doesn’t, show it but we were in that game. You had to be there. The season does not get any easier. We have to bring it. When we play South Florida that will be big time for us.’

Before this weekend, Syracuse was undefeated in Big East play, but following two routs at the hands of conference foes, Jensen’s confidence isn’t deterred. Now he wants that same sort of attitude from his team.

‘I want to be able to bring Maria Sharapova in here and have the girls believe they can hit with her,’ he said. ‘You can’t hide from competition. I don’t hit for them, I don’t serve for them, so if they don’t believe it and have a sliver of doubt, they already lost half the battle.’

Most of the players research their competition before the match, so Jensen said that placed the doubt in their minds.

In order to encourage confidence and the competitive sprit during practice, Jensen constantly rewards the winner of his mini competitions. For example, whoever wins the most single matches that day in practice doesn’t have to run the sprints.

Jensen continues to stress that his team is the most physically fit team in the country, and if they could make the matches run for four to five hours, Syracuse would easily win.

‘We didn’t execute our style of play this weekend,’ Jensen said. ‘We have to practice harder and have a little more purpose when we walk on court. We need to believe we are going to win. But we walked away more experienced from this weekend.’

Syracuse will have to take that experience and face two Ivy League competitors, Yale and Brown next weekend. Syracuse gets a break from Big East competition until March 16, when they travel to South Florida.

But Jensen still laments the blowouts from this past weekend.

‘Boy, we could have won those,’ Jensen said. ‘Now we go back to practice, and we have to move quicker and realize we could have won big points if we execute. Now we need to address 10 percent of the past and 90 percent of what we are going to do.’

mkgalant@syr.edu

Published on February 25, 2008 at 12:00 pm