At the beginning of the day, it looked like history was repeating itself. Ball State was leading Purdue 1-0 by winning the opening doubles point.
"It was a real exciting doubles point," Coach Richards said. "It went into a tie breaker at number one (Matt Baccarani/Patrick Thompson), and it was a long tie breaker."
Unfortunately for the Cardinals, Purdue was able to recover later in the day by going 5-1 in singles competition to secure the 5-2 victory.
It wasn't for a lack of trying by the Cardinals, however. Michael Heule, Baccarani and Brad Rhodes all bringing the No. 53 Boilermakers to three sets.
"All the singles matches were really close, and we were only able to pull in one," Richards said. "We didn't capture in on opportunities in - actually every game we lost."
Still, Richards isn't making any excuses for his team.
"I'm not disappointed in our effort or in our play, but good team have to win those matches, and we need to get that done," he said.
It doesn't get any easier for the Cardinals after this. This weekend the Cardinals take on No. 58 Northwestern on Friday evening and Wisconsin on Sunday.
"I think Northwestern is a better team than Purdue, at least on paper," Richards said. "We just have to keep working harder, keep getting better week to week. We need to work hard and try to play a little bit harder on Friday than we did this weekend."
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