Throughout day one and day two of the Ball State Invitational this weekend, the Ball State men's tennis team had issues on the doubles side of the court. Three of the five doubles teams lost their opening round match ups and won seven of their 12 combined matches.
Despite the shaky start, Ball State finished the final day of the tournament Sunday on a positive note.
The team of sophomore Austin Smith and junior Alex Brym rebounded from their first round loss to IPFW and won the Cardinal Consolation flight 8-4.
"We've been struggling in practice a little bit and were kind of in a slump, I would say," Smith said. "After the first match, coach came over and talked to us about how to regroup and get refocused for our next match. From there, we used a lot of good teamwork and better communication."
In the Flight A Consolation, seniors Derek Carpenter and Zane Smith made it to the final round after its tough 8-6 loss to Louisville in the Round of 16. They lost their final round match 8-5 to Wisconsin-Green Bay.
Freshman Patrick Elliott, who teamed with Marquette's Cam Tehrani, won the White flight doubles after an emergency came up for Northern Illinois.
Elliott said it was interesting teaming up with an opposing player.
"It was definitely different not playing with a teammate because you're not as comfortable on the court," he said. "It took us a little bit to get used to each other's game, but once we did, we played pretty well together."
After a combined 20-8 record through two days of singles action, Ball State finished play Sunday where it left off. Even though Ball State players went 3-3 overall, two of the losses were caused by Austin Smith. In the Cardinal flight, he defeated Elliott 6-1, 6-3 in the semifinal round and junior Alex Doherty 6-3, 6-3 in the finals.
"It's never really fun playing your teammate because we're all pretty close as a team," Smith said. "But going into a match situation, you treat it like every other match and think about doing all the right things."
Despite having two of his players face each other in the final round of the Cardinal flight, coach Bill Richards said they both got a lot of positives out of the weekend.
"Yeah, Austin won the tournament, he won that match and he's got the edge," he said. "But I thought Alex [Doherty] showed a lot of progress in terms of what we've been trying to get him to do on the court in terms of structuring points and mixing things up a little bit more.
In terms of Ball State's final two tournaments not being until the spring schedule, Richards said he will continue to look for progress out of his players.
"It's pretty much the same every week," he said. "Our whole goal is to continue to improve, continue working hard and keep trying to do things that are going to make us better individually, which makes us better as a team when January gets here."
Ball State will return to action on Oct. 20 when it travels to Knoxville, Tenn., to compete in the ITA Fall Individual Regional Championships. First serve is to be announced.
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