IU men's tennis picks up first road victory

A week after winning their first Big Ten match, No. 69 IU (13-13, 2-6) won its first road match of the season.

IU Coach Randy Bloemendaal said he was still left wanting more.

“It was a tough weekend,” Bloemendaal said. “We got our first road victory which was good. The Nebraska match was a little closer than what it looked like in the end.”

A day before defeating Iowa (9-9, 1-5) 4-3 the Hoosiers lost against No. 66 Nebraska (10-9, 2-3) 6-1.

The weekend started unpredictably. The match against Nebraska, which was originally scheduled for Friday afternoon, was rescheduled to Saturday morning due to flight delays out of Indianapolis.

“Nebraska’s pretty good and it was a tough situation with our travel problems,”
Bloemendaal said. “I thought it was a tough match all the way around and I thought we didn’t handle the adversity as well as we could have.”

The only Hoosier to record a point against Nebraska was sophomore Daniel Bednarczyk, winning 7-5, 6-4 at No. 3 singles.

Bednarczyk followed that performance with a 6-0, 6-4 victory at Iowa, again at No. 3 singles.

“He’s just starting to get confident out there on the court,” Bloemendaal said. “He’s starting to strike the ball well, playing confident and he’s figuring out what he needs to do in the tough situations.”

Bednarczyk was also the only Hoosier to win against both Nebraska and Iowa in singles, accentuating the struggles IU has experienced concerning consistency, Bloemendaal said.

“I don’t think we’re confident enough yet across the board to feel like these situations are going to get easier,” Bloemendaal said. “We just have to battle. I thought we battled hard against Nebraska. We just didn’t bring our A-game, it was more like our C-game.”

Bednarczyk also assisted in helping the Hoosiers regain their prowess in doubles play with two wins at No. 1 doubles with his partner sophomore Samuel Monette.

IU snapped a four-match Big Ten losing streak in doubles against Iowa, winning at No. 1 and No. 3 doubles.

“We played pretty tight doubles against Nebraska,” Bloemendaal said. “Iowa actually played much better against us than Nebraska did, we just outplayed them.”

Monette also won his first Big Ten match of the season against Iowa, 6-4, 6-3. An elbow injury sidelined Monette last weekend, and his return had a less than substantial effect, on the singles results Bloemendaal said.

“(Monette’s) impact was very subtle,” Bloemendaal said. “I definitely thinks it helps in doubles, but I didn’t see an overall impact in singles.”

IU has four matches remaining this season all of them against ranked opponents. Three of them will be played away from Bloomington.

“I think we take them one at a time,” Bloemendaal said. “We’ve been talking a lot about how we want to go about this last part of the season. We’ve got a storyline and we’re going to try and follow it. We came through in a road match. Now we have to step up the level a little bit and see if we can do it.”