Men’s tennis head coach Nick Carless noticed a difference in his team’s 5-2 loss to Boise State on March 10. The way he saw it, the team held back and beat themselves. Since he had encountered that kind of loss many times in his coaching career, he knew there was only one way to address it: Pump up the team’s swagger.
“A lot of what you do just has to come from your own belief, as a team,” Carless said. “I just say it is your belief in yourself and what you can do out there as a team, as an individual. If we don’t believe now that we can really beat anybody in the country, any conference, whoever we play, then we are not going to ever believe it.”
And the Mustangs did, as evidenced in their decisive two wins against Nebraska (5-1) and Princeton (6-1) before dropping a 4-3 loss to No. 17 Washington during their three matches over spring break.
“Sometimes you can get in your own way, more so than the opponent does,” Carless said. “(Boise State) was a match where we learned, ‘Hey, if we kinda go out and play free, we really can beat anybody.'”
Former Arroyo Grande High School standout Andre Dome played a big part in helping his team rebound from its loss to the Broncos. Against Nebraska, he swept Christopher Aumuelle (7-5, 6-2) only before turning around with another sweep against Princeton’s Matija Pecotic (6-4, 6-2) in the Cal Poly’s next match.
Against Washington, however, Dome hit a hiccup. He defeated Kyle McMorrow, the Huskies top player, 6-4 in his first set, fell 7-6 in the second and fell again 6-4 in the third and final set.
“It’s not that he played bad, the other guy just played a little better,” Carless said. “He didn’t serve well, which is his biggest strength, but he played well, if that makes sense. He usually gets a lot of his points off of his serves, whether it’s an ace or a service winner, and he just didn’t get those against Washington.”
Despite the loss, Carless said the experience of facing talent like McMorrow, who came into the match ranked No. 17 in the nation, will help Dome out in the long run — especially in the postseason.
“It’s going to do wonders for him as it gets down toward the end of the year,” Carless said. “His ultimate goal is to make the NCAA Tournament. In that tournament, he is going to be seeing players just like he saw against Washington, and even better. He’ll know how to handle a situation a little bit better.”
The same goes for his team, which in Carless’ first season looks to be headed toward the postseason. With just five matches to go before the Big West Championships in Indian Wells on April 27 to 29, the Mustangs have won 10 of their past 12 matches. And in their two recent wins over Princeton and Nebraska, the Mustangs hardly stumbled.
Against Nebraska, Cal Poly took five of six singles points, with the only loss coming when the Cornhuskers’ Benedikt Lindheim defeated Brian McPhee 6-0, 7-5. Doubles were not played because of darkness.
In their 6-1 victory against Princeton, the Mustangs did the same. They won five matchups in singles, as well as the doubles point, over the Tigers.
Both of those performances, Carless said, can be attributed to the gut check the team received after falling to Boise State.
“Again, as a coach, you just gotta tell your players, ‘Hey you gotta learn from it, gotta get better.'” Carless said. “And I think that will really help us out.”
Brian De Los Santos contributed to this report