For the 19th time (a Mid-American Conference record) and for the second consecutive year, the Ball State University men's tennis team won the MAC regular season title.
The No. 64 Cardinals dominated the Huskies of Northern Illinois University on Saturday en route to a 7-0 victory. The win assured the Cardinals (18-6) of the outright MAC championship with the team finishing a perfect 5-0 in conference play.
"We played like we needed to play on Saturday," coach Bill Richards said. "We played like a championship team, and we took care of the business that we needed to take care of."
The Cardinals had little difficulty disposing of the Huskies. The No. 47 doubles combination of Matt Baccarani and Joe Epkey won 8-4 in No. 1 doubles and brothers Tony and Jarrod Epkey also won 8-4 in the No. 2 slot to secure the doubles point for Ball State. The Cardinals would lose 8-7 (8-6) in No. 3 doubles, but that would prove to be the team's only blemish on the day.
In singles play, the Cardinals thrashed the Huskies in all six spots, earning six straight set victories.
Senior Tony Epkey said the win was just a matter of execution for the Cardinals.
"We definitely expected to win and obviously needed to win," Epkey said. "It was a big goal of ours to win the conference regular season outright. I think everybody was pretty focused and pretty much knew what we had to do."
Even though the win marks the 19th time Richards has coached a MAC regular season championship team, he says the feeling never grows old and is especially sweet for his team.
"It's definitely still a very special feeling," Richards said. "The more you win, the more you want to win. It's not about me, it's about each team. Every team's different and it's special for each team. It's way more about the players than it is the coach."
Tony Epkey, who has won the MAC championship both years he has been at Ball State since transferring from West Virginia University, said winning a championship is something that should not be taken lightly.
"It's a very rare thing that most college athletes don't get to do at any time in their career," Epkey said. "It obviously feels great, but we still have work to do."
The Cardinals will have the No. 1 seed in the MAC Tournament which begins Thursday in Toledo, Ohio, and lasts through Saturday. The Cardinals will face the winner of the University of Buffalo and Northern Illinois in the second round of the MAC tournament Friday.
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