Head tennis coach Kathy Bull called her team's 4-3 loss at Bowling Green on Saturday "an extremely deflating and disappointing loss."
It marked the second time in as many weekends the team lost by one point. The last 4-3 loss occurred at Miami.
Ball State has beaten the Falcons the previous two years 6-1 and 4-3. Bull said she has always considered matches against the Falcons as heated contests.
"We always have classic battles," she said. "The last few years we've had the edge on the battles, and I feel we really just didn't live up to our tradition in that particular match."
Ball State places so much emphasis on winning Mid-American Conference matches that it doesn't matter how close the match is in the end, Bull said.
"I didn't feel any better losing [Saturday] 3-4 than I did losing 7-0 last weekend at Marshall," she said. "It's really all the same to me."
Ball State started the match by winning the doubles point with wins by the No. 1 team of sophomores Leisa Brooks and Jenny Batty and the No. 2 team of junior Melissa Roach and sophomore Jill Wieman. Bowling Green followed the same formula for beating Ball State as it did against Miami by losing the doubles point and winning the overall match. Bull said she pointed out that fact to her team.
"The first few minutes of the matches [Bowling Green] came out swinging at us and then things cooled off, and we got a lot of matches into three sets," she said.
Bull said the team needed to get more production from the middle of the lineup to win the match.
The last two matches of the day were three set losses by Ball State. No. 4 junior Susan Kelley lost 6-2, 6-7(7), 7-5, and senior Alyce Zollman lost 6-7 (6), 6-2, 6-4.
Normally at this time of the year the team takes a couple of days off to rest injuries, but Bull said with the results of the previous weekend's rest would be difficult to justify.
The match with the Falcons (7-9, 3-4) ends an eight-game road stretch for Ball State (7-11, 1-6). The Cardinals are 1-7 during the five-week period.
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