Ball State continued to dominate in doubles this weekend to remain undefeated at home. The Cardinals won the doubles point against both Dayton and Bradley 2-1. Matt Laramore and Brad Rhodes dropped both doubles matches falling to Dayton's Jon Khoury and Reaves Kathary and Bradley's Alex Roby and Wil Lofgren.
"We struggled at second doubles all day," coach Bill Richards said, "Laramore and Rhodes seem to play well against good teams and struggle against the weaker teams. Fortunately that didn't cost us a doubles point today."
The No. 62 Cardinals improved to 5-3 on the season after beating Dayton 5-2 and Bradley 7-0.
"I was fairly pleased. I wanted to dominate these teams, and I felt we needed to beat them pretty handedly," Richards said. "Not to take anything away from (Dayton and Bradley) but, as I told my team, we are who we are and they are who they are and we need to separate ourselves from those teams. And I felt we did."
The Cardinals stuggled in singles early in the day against Dayton, without their top player Matt Baccarani. Klint Knable and Mike Heule both fell to their Dayton opponents.
"Baccarani didn't play against Dayton; he's got a little bit of a groin pull, so we held him out. We felt that Bradley was going to be the tougher of the two so we held him out in the morning, and everyone moved up," Richards explained.
The 5-2 win over Dayton was the closest for the Cardinals against a non-Big Ten opponent.
"Overall I thought it was a pretty solid effort, but the tendency to not get up for lesser matches can be there, and I think, to a degree, we had a little bit of that today. But we came through," Richards said,
Baccarani returned to singles competition against Bradley and started out slow but eventually dominated the match against Marko Marevic 7-6 (3), 6-1. The match was intense, with some words exchanged.
"Well, I think that's just the nature of the sport. You get the personalities involved and a couple close line calls and a little emotion and that can happen, and that's just part of the game" Richards said. "That happens most matches. A little talking back and forth, and things happen, but after it's over you just shake hands and walk away."
The Cardinals will bring a 5-3 record to Bloomington when they face No. 52 Indiana on Saturday.
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