The Penn State men's tennis team embarks on the biggest tournament of the fall this weekend when it heads to Harvard for the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships.

"The ECAC's are the event in the fall," said senior co-captain Damon Accardi. "It's the biggest and most important tournament. It carries the most weight of all the others in the fall."

The ECAC draw will consist of 16 schools from the East.

The tournament play will be dual matches, which are team matches consisting of six singles matches and three doubles matches. Teams are seeded 1-16. Penn State will find out its ranking upon arrival.

The reason the ECAC Championships are so important is that many ranking systems use the tournament to determine where the Nittany Lions will place for the remainder of the season. A good East ranking or NCAA seeding could be in the balance, which would lead to softer draws, which leads to more wins, which leads to higher seedings. It's a cycle Penn State wants to get on the upside of.

"This is huge for us going into the spring," Accardi said. "If we do well, it will help us nationally and in the Big Ten. We have to do well against the East."

The importance of the ECAC Championships is something the coaching staff stresses from the first conditioning workout.

"Coach (Jan Bortner) talks about it during practice and meetings a lot," senior Matt Nielsen said.

Even the freshmen, barely six weeks into their collegiate careers, have picked up on the magnitude of this weekend.

"When I got here, that's all I heard was ECACs this, ECACs that," freshman Roddy Cantey said. "From Day One I've been hearing about it. It sounds like a big deal to me."

Bortner didn't even bother exchanging pleasantries when the freshman first showed up for work.

'"The first words out of (Bortner's) mouth were ECAC's," Todd Stecko said. "It's real good to be a part of it. Now it's a team thing. It has been all individual before. Now we get to play together.

"We get to see where we stand as a team."

Assistant coach Toby Simpson feels good about where the team currently stands, according to how they have looked in practice.

"The guys know they have to work hard," he said.

"They have been putting in the work on the practice courts. This is a good opportunity. Hopefully, we will be ready," Simpson said.