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The Ball State Cardinals have a long weekend ahead of them. Tonight they head to Evanston, Ill., to take on No. 58 Northwestern, and Sunday they head to Wisconsin to play the Badgers.
"We are facing two tough teams on the road," said coach Bill Richards. "We need to have a winning attitude and hope the results come our way."
Northwestern (4-2) is coming off of a victory against No. 73 Northern Illinois, and also upset No. 25 Pepperdine earlier in the season. Its two losses were against No. 28 Virginia and No. 30 Minnesota.
"Northwestern is much better than their early season ranking," Richards said. "Looking to the Northwestern match, it's somewhere in between. (They're) better than Purdue, worse than (Illinois). To upset Northwestern will take our very best."
The No. 62 Cardinals (2-2) are coming off a tough loss to Purdue, where they won the doubles point but only this weeks MAC Men's Tennis Player of the Week Klint Knable, who won both his singles and his doubles match against the No. 53 Boilermakers. Richards thinks that if they correct the mistakes they made last weekend it could help secure the victories this weekend.
"I thought our level of play was OK; I thought we played well enough to win," he said. "At this point it becomes an individual thing. Each player need to correct the mistakes that were made (the) next week."
The Badgers are 2-0 after defeating Northern Illinois and DePaul, and have the No. 8 doubles team nationally in David Hippee and Alexander Kasarov. The duo lost to Ball State's unranked doubles team of Matt Baccarani and Patrick Thompson in the fall at the ITA Regional.
"I'm not sure why Thompson and Baccarani aren't ranked," Richards said. "That was a very heated match. I'm sure from that doubles match they will certainly be looking for revenge."
The Cards were able to defeat Wisconsin last year 5-2 after falling to the Badgers 4-3 for several years in a row.
"In general the Wisconsin / Ball State matches have been quite a rivalry," Richards said. "We had seven years in a row we had 4-3 at one point. It's the type of match you expect to be very heated and intense."
This weekend will mark the third in a row Ball State has traveled to a ranked opponent to play, facing No. 1 Illinois and No. 53 Purdue in past weeks.
"We have to play the Big Ten teams before the week of Spring Break, before the conference schedule," Richards said. "Every year we play these good teams, it really tests our toughness, which is something we need to improve. We have to take toughness up another notch."
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