The Ball State Cardinals had a rough trip to the Windy City, dropping two matches within 12 hours.
The Cardinals started the weekend Friday night with a 2-5 loss to DePaul.
"(They're) by far the best team we've played all year," coach Kathy Bull said.
After the Cardinals were swept in doubles, loosing all three tie-breakers, they turned the match around, bringing three matches to third set tie-breakers, with Katie Owans and Jessica Thompson coming out victorious.
" We had some mini-goals for this weekend," Bull said. "We want everybody to be competitive - we had accomplished that on Friday. We played with them in doubles, and in singles, we were much better, at about 85 percent. I thought Friday we played pretty well."
The other half of the weekend began at 5 Saturday morning.
"The DePaul match didn't get over until 9:45 (p.m.), and we were supposed to be warming up at 7 in the morning. We were up literally up at 5 (a.m.) . We had breakfast and went to the club where we were supposed to play. The other team didn't get there 'til 15 after."
The other team was the University of Illinois-Chicago, who came out and beat the Cardinals 0-7.
"If you would have told me any time in the last year I was gonna loose to UIC 0-7, I would have told you you were crazy," Bull said. "It was a much closer match than the score sheet suggests."
On top of that, the doors to the courts were locked, and the teams waited until 8 a.m. Coach Bull says the quick turn around was one of the major reasons for their performance.
"We got started slow and took us a while to get into it. We didn't have our rhythm at that time," Bull said. "We got it back. Our top four singles matches were neck and neck. Roach had player on the ropes, winning the first set in a tie-breaker, before she hit a wall. Jenny Batty lost two very close sets. We just didn't have any luck to get any of the close ones."
The severity of the loss caught Bull and her team by surprise.
"I've been reliving the weekend all day today," Bull said Sunday. "We're not going to let it get us down. I think we were all kind of shell shocked. At the end of the day, I was speechless."
The Ball State Cardinals return to action Friday, traveling to Akron and Buffalo to begin their conference play.
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