IU women hold recent edge with Boilers

History often repeats itself.\nAnd hopefully, that will hold true for IU's women's tennis team in this weekend's road matches against No. 51 Purdue and No. 61 Illinois.\nThe No. 27 Hoosiers (7-7, 1-0 Big Ten) will make their way to West Lafayette for Saturday's 9 a.m. match against the Boilermakers (2-8, 0-1), a team they barely dodged in last spring's 4-3 match.\n"Purdue's record is very deceiving," said IU coach Lin Loring. "They've lost to a lot of people 4 -to-3, and they've scored points on Tennessee and Notre Dame -- and they're both top-20 teams."\nLoring's squad will then travel to Champaign, Ill., for Sunday's 11 a.m. match-up against a foe it also squeaked past in a 4-3 meeting last spring -- the Fighting Illini (7-5, 1-0).\n"I think they're both going to be really close matches," Loring said. "We haven't played that great in the last two weeks, so we're really going to need everyone to come out and play real well."\nBut history is on Loring's side.\nTwo years ago, an injury-ridden Hoosier team dropped a 7-0 decision to IU's biggest rival -- this was Loring's second Purdue loss in his 27-year tenure. Last year's conference clinching win advanced Loring's win total against the Boilers to 44.\nThe loss number triples for the Illini, as IU is 29-6 against them in 27 years.\nDuring spring break, the Hoosiers won their conference opener against Penn State (4-3), but fell to University of Nevada-Las Vegas (6-1).\nIn the conference opener, senior Dominika Walterova got win No. 11, giving IU a starting line-up of six players above 10 singles wins on the year.\n"We always want to beat Purdue," said Walterova, who might be battling the Boilers for the last time Saturday. "We're going to go out there confident and ready to win."\nSophomore Laura McGaffigan scored the lone point against UNLV, pushing her spring win total to 11 and her year win total to 19. She currently is IU's leading scorer on the spring and the year.\nSophomore Cecile Perton and freshman Brianna Williams are currently second to her with 15 match points apiece in singles.\nJunior Sarah Batty trails right behind McGaffigan with nine spring victories.\nSenior Dora Vastag has 14 wins on the year from her No. 1 singles position. The Big Ten Women's Player of the Week ranks No. 99 in the nation and has gone up against many of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's top 100.\nVastag has coupled with Perton at the No. 3 doubles position to amass a 14-5 record on the year, with 10 of these wins coming in the past 13 matches.\n"We all remember what a close match we had with (Purdue) last year," said Vastag, whose red-shirt status will give her another crack at the Boilers next year. "It was the match that clinched the Big Ten for us -- we'll all remember that."\n-- Contact Staff Writer Andy Romey at aromey@indiana.edu.