After two blowout victories against Hawai’i and William & Mary to start the season, No. 7 Duke is ready to face its hardest opponents of the year so far in the 2011 ITA Kick-Off Weekend.
The Blue Devils (2-0) have dropped only one singles set in their two matches and are looking to continue the momentum against Brown at the Sheffield Indoor Tennis Center Sunday at 10 a.m.
“This weekend will be by far the toughest match we’ve had so far, so we have to expect the fight,” head coach Jamie Ashworth said. “We’re the favorite, we’re hosting and we’re one of the top 16 teams in the country, but we have to show that and prove that this weekend.”
To prepare for this weekend’s back-to-back matches, the team is working on staying intense throughout the match.
Another area of emphasis during practice has been the importance of winning the doubles point to set the tone of the match.
“For doubles, we’re working on taking control of the net and trying a couple of different pairings to see who’s compatible,” senior Reka Zsilinszka said. “When you get that initial momentum, especially if it’s a really convincing win, it really demoralizes the opponent and gives us confidence.”
And Duke will have confidence going into Sunday’s match against the unranked Bears (0-1), especially since the Blue Devils are hosting their region’s qualifying rounds of the ITA Team Indoor Nationals. In total, there are 60 teams competing for 15 spots in the tournament’s final rounds at the University of Virginia.
“I think we have a pretty good chance of qualifying, and we just need to keep working on things we’ve been doing in practice,” senior Ellah Nze said. “We obviously need to qualify here to get to the actual tournament, but we’ve been doing a lot of doubles drills and working on different plays just to make sure we’re comfortable with each other.”
Following the match against Brown, Duke will face either Tulsa or Texas A&M Monday, and the team that wins both its matches advances to the final rounds Feb. 18-21.
“This is definitely a time of the year where we want to be playing well when we’re playing the best teams, and there’s no tomorrow without today, so if we don’t take care of what we need to this weekend, we’ll lose that opportunity,” Ashworth said. “We’ve had a good week of practice.... Hopefully we’ll take care of what we need to on day one and see where we stand after that.”
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