There's a fine line between confident and cocky. The side of the line that Matt Baccarani and Patrick Thompson are on is up to one's own interpretation. The duo, the No. 1 doubles team for Ball State University, qualified as one of the 32 doubles teams to participate in the NCAA Men's Tennis Championships, which starts Wednesday. Baccarani said they can compete with everyone in the tournament."This year we've already made some noise in the two other national tournaments," he said. "Guys know who we are and we know we can play with anyone. There's no one there we don't have a chance to beat." Thompson said the team's familiarity with the rest of the doubles field will be helpful."We've played the best and we've beat the best," he said. "We're going to go out there, we're going to fight. Hopefully it turns out well. It's a great opportunity."The duo was ranked No. 4 in the preseason, largely based on its performance at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association All-American Qualifying, where the duo beat three ranked opponents. One of those three opponents is the current No. 1 ranked team, Scott Green and Ross Wilson of The Ohio State University. The duo also reached the quarterfinals of the ITA National Indoor Individual Championships.But Thompson and Baccarani were split up from the No. 1 team after starting the spring season with a 7-5 record. Coach Bill Richards said it was to make the team stronger overall, not because they were struggling together. "The reason we didn't play them together in our dual match season was because we just felt we wanted to balance our teams and we felt it was best for our team," Richards said. "We kind of got the best of both worlds." Joe Epkey replaced Thompson at No. 1 doubles, where Baccarani and Epkey went 15-0 on the season. In order to qualify for the NCAA championships, a team must play at least 10 matches together in the spring. The duo's fall performance kept them in the rankings for the rest of the season.Thompson and Baccarani also made it into the tournament last year as alternates, where they lost in the first round to Ryler DeHeart and GD Jones from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Baccarani also qualified for the singles tournament because of a new rule this year where the highest ranked singles player from each conference makes it into the tournament as long as the player is ranked in the ITA Top 125. He is currently ranked No. 104, but was ranked earlier in the season at No. 61. Baccarani is the first singles player from Ball State to qualify for the tournament since John Amos in 1994 and the fourth overall. He said the new rule is a fair one."I think it's a good rule because guys in this conference don't play the same schedule as the guys in the SEC, or PAC-10," Baccarani said. "I think for sure if I was in the SEC then I'd be ranked high enough to get in automatically."Baccarani's high-profile victories of the year include a 6-2, 6-1 victory over No. 43 Matko Maravic from the University of Michigan and a 6-4, 6-3 win over No. 73 Christian Tempke from Northwestern University."He had to have a great year to be able to accomplish that," Richards said. "We play a real strong schedule and gave him the opportunity to get the types of wins to get ranked, so we're very pleased for him."The tournament draw will be announced Tuesday.
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