The Virginia women’s tennis team has three weeks to pinpoint the weakest aspects of its game and transform those aspects into winning ones before the NCAA Tournament.
The Cavaliers have struggled as of late, and their failure to move past the ACC Tournament quarterfinals only further hampered the team. The demanding in-conference competition, though, also helped identify what the players need to change and the urgency with which they need to do so.
Virginia (13-9, 5-6 ACC) faced off against Boston College (7-14, 2-9) in the first round April 16, advancing with a 4-1 victory. All three doubles teams and the top five singles players assisted in the Cavaliers’ second win against Boston College since they beat the Eagles 6-1 March 1.
Virginia moved forward in the bracket and then played Duke for the second time this season in the quarterfinals. The resulting 4-0 Blue Devil shut-out echoed the Cavaliers 7-0 loss to the Devils (23-3, 10-1) April 4.
“The reality is we’re not, right now, as good as Duke,” Virginia coach Mark Guilbeau said. “And at some point, we’ve got to put a whole season together, and a pre-season, and a whole period of time that makes us strong enough to go start to finish, and be [as good as] Duke. We should be one of the top-four seeds in our conference and be playing for the semifinals or the finals of this thing.”
With less than a month until the NCAA Tournament, players said the team has plans for quick improvement.
“It’s going to be the little places that we really have to tighten up on, and that’s what teams that win the ACCs do really well,” freshman Lindsey Hardenbergh said. “Each court knows exactly what they’re doing, and you’re not going to be given a bunch of free chances or a lot of opportunities in case you screw up. You have one or two and you have to be able to execute.”
Guilbeau said Virginia will be dedicating practice time to honing its ability to both serve and return aggressively and intelligently.
“We’ve talked about it a lot but I don’t think we’ve really, really agreed to the degree of attacking we need to,” Guilbeau said. “We’re going to try to do that very, very aggressively, even at the expense of missing a number of balls ... I think we’d be a better team right now, if all of our serves were second serves more or less, most of the time, and didn’t have so many consistency problems, or low percentages, or worst-case double faults.”
The same way the serve acts as the starting block for each point, a team’s warm-up session is something that can set the tone for an entire match. After warming up on the same courts as the competition in Cary, N.C. last week, the Cavaliers saw room for improvement.
“We’re not talking about perfect technique, or this grip, or that strategy,” Guilbeau said. “We’re just talking about making the balls at the beginning and trying to get in that habit of not accepting misses. Our kids are too okay with missing shots.”
Georgia Tech, ranked No. 4 in the ACC, warmed up next to the Cavaliers, providing a stark contrast to Virginia.
“From the beginning, [Georgia Tech was] making 50, 100, sometimes 300 balls,” Guilbeau said. “That’s something, again, we’ve asked for from the beginning. It’s always a good time to maybe remind your team to step up and do that better, and again, just not settle for such a low standard in terms of the most important part of this game which is making a lot of balls.”
The development of bad habits is something that has plagued the Virginia women this year. To perform well at the NCAAs, the team needs to return to a higher standard of performance in both general and technical aspects of the game.
“We’re putting [strategies to break these habits] in place definitely for long-term, but we’re hoping it can happen immediately,” Guilbeau said.
Selections have yet to be determined, but the Cavaliers already have formulated a good idea of the competition they will see in the opening rounds of the tournament.
“We’ll definitely play a team that’s more and less had the same ups and downs that we’ve had, so it’s going to be a tough first match,” senior Amanda Rales said. “And then we’re probably going to play one of the top teams in the whole tournament the next round, so, I mean, we’re dealt a tough hand for ourselves. But that’s just more motivation for the girls who are going to be here next year, so that they don’t get into the same position.”
Though the Cavaliers have some tough challenges ahead of them, they hope to make the adjustments to their technique that will give them a chance to compete for a national title.
“We have some tremendous opportunities to make it better and to finish in the best way we can,” Guilbeau said. “That’s what we intend to do, and the three weeks will definitely be used full-force. We’ll do everything we can.”
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