For the Penn State men's tennis team, the third time around was not a charm at the Eastern College Athletic Conference Invitational in Flushing Meadows, N.Y., this weekend.
The No. 1-seeded Nittany Lions dropped a 5-2 semifinal match-up against No. 4 University of Pennsylvania yesterday.
After rolling through the first two rounds with a 7-0 win against St. Bonaventure and a 6-1 win against No. 8 seed Yale, the Lions were looking ready to reach the finals for the third straight year.
The sentiment was that this was the year they could finally capture the championship. While the coaches have stressed focusing on the matches in the present tense, it seemed that the players may have been looking ahead to the finals prematurely.
"We believed that if we got to the finals, we'd be just fine," Penn State assistant coach Bill Potoczny said. "But somehow we didn't get the message across. I'm not sure why guys weren't ready for the match today."
The Lions started out in a 1-0 hole against Penn because of an old foe -- the loss of the doubles point.
At No. 3 doubles, the return of senior co-captain Malcolm Scatliffe seemed to have given the Lions a boost, as he teamed with sophomore Michael James to win Penn State's only doubles match. The duo took down Penn's Justin Fox and Brandon O'Gara, 9-7.
Missed opportunities, ineffective returns and a number of missed passing shots plagued the Lions in doubles, and throughout the match Potoczny said. These factors, usually strong points for the team, added up to derail its championship hopes.
"We had multiple opportunities missed," Potoczny said. "If you don't win the big points, you're not going to beat good players."
While the team as a whole was missing opportunities, some younger players were able to fight through the mistakes and capitalize. Freshman Adam Slatger held off Joseph Lok in two tiebreakers to win 7-6, 7-6 at the No. 4 singles spot. James was the Lions' other scorer, continuing his near-automatic performance in singles, defeating Jimmy Fairbanks in straight sets, 6-4, 6-4 at the No. 6 spot.
Even with the No. 1 ranking, the Lions found out that their usually stellar singles play could not bail them out after dropping the doubles point.
Potoczny said that while the Penn State players came out not ready to play, their opponents were able to hit the shots they wanted to and get into a rhythm, making a comeback difficult.
The ability to come to play every day is something that the Lions must be more consistent at to reach the next level.
"Each guy has to examine for himself, what he can do to get better for the next time," Potoczny said. "As a team we did not play up to the level we should have."
