The men’s tennis team has gotten off to a rough start to their spring season and Saturday’s match against Old Dominion was their most recent defeat. The Owls dropped a 6-1 decision on the road and saw their record drop to 0-5.
Before the loss to Old Dominion, Temple had lost its previous matches by one-sided scores as well losing 6-1 to William & Mary and 7-0 to UMBC. But despite the losses continuing to pile up, head coach Steve Mauro remains positive.
“It showed that we can play with some of the top teams in the country. They’re a strong team,” Mauro said.
Mauro was referencing lots of close matches in singles as freshman Filip Stipcic and junior Kristian Marquart both won sets in their matches, but failed to come out on top.
Sophomore Nicolas Paulus also played a tight singles match but his victory in a tiebreak set gave Temple their lone point of the match at the third singles flight.
While Mauro remains confident, he said he believes his players need a boost in confidence as he referenced a scoring change in college tennis that has been plaguing the Owls.
“There’s a new format now that when the score is deuce you play a deciding point and we’ve been losing a lot of these deciding points when the score is tied. I think that if we just get our confidence up and believe in ourselves things will turn around and we’ll win those points,” Mauro said.
Mauro said one of the things he believes will help his team is coming back home. All the matches so far for Temple have been on the road, and they’ll be home for the first time against Drexel on Wednesday.
“It will be good to go back home and hopefully things will go our way this time,” Mauro added.
Greg Frank can be reached at greg.frank@temple.edu or on Twitter @g_frank6.
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