Stanford and UCLA vie for spot in NCAA quarterfinals

After sweeping Pepperdine in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, the No. 7 Stanford men’s tennis team is gearing up to face No. 9 UCLA, one of its biggest rivals during the season. The teams will battle for a spot in the quarterfinals in Athens, Ga., the site of the tournament’s last four rounds.

“There’s a lot of excitement when you know this is what you’ve been working toward for eight months,” sophomore Bradley Klahn said. “This is it. This is what everything comes down to.”

The Cardinal flew into Georgia on Tuesday and has spent the last few days getting acclimated to the pace and intensity of the tournament. One thing that has made the transition a bit easier is the weather.

“I was expecting 80 [degrees] and muggy,” Klahn said. “It hasn’t been that bad.”

That could all change today though, as the forecast calls for scattered thunderstorms and high humidity. If it does rain, Stanford will be prepared for any possible delays. The Cardinal played much of its season under constant threat of rain, which forced matches to start late or play doubles first.

In fact, a Stanford-UCLA match was cancelled on Feb. 26 due to rain.

Assuming the weather does not impact the match significantly, the Cardinal should expect much of the same as the last time it faced the Bruins, on April 3 in Los Angeles.

That day, Stanford pulled out a nail-biting 4-3 victory to keep its Pac-10 championship dreams alive, which it went on to realize with a victory against California to end the regular season. Doubles victories by the teams of senior Richard Wire and junior Alex Clayton, and freshman Matt Kandath and junior Greg Hirshman, gave Stanford an early lead.

Singles victories by Klahn and Hirshman put Stanford within one point of the victory. With sophomore Ryan Thacher, freshman Denis Lin and Wire all losing, the pressure was on Clayton. The captain pulled off a gritty 6-4, 2-6, 7-5 victory to seal the win for Stanford.

“We both know each other’s game real well and we play them a lot,” Klahn said. “We’ve seen their guys a lot and they’ve seen us. We just have to be ready to fight for every point.”

Two keys to Stanford’s success today will be the play of Klahn and Thacher in doubles and Clayton in singles.

Once the top-ranked team in the nation, the duo of Klahn and Thacher has lost only seven matches this season. Two of those losses came against UCLA’s Amit Inbar and Nick Meister—the opponents Klahn and Thacher will face today. If the sophomores can pull off a victory, it will give Stanford a great shot at winning the doubles point and gaining the momentum going forward.

As before, there’s a good chance the match could come down to Clayton. No stranger to the pressure of big-time tournaments, Clayton seems to be playing his best tennis of the year after dropping down to the No. 3 spot in the lineup.

As one of the team’s leaders, Clayton has the task of trying to calm Stanford’s nerves. Klahn, one of the more emotional players on the team, doesn’t think the pressure of the playoffs will have an effect on the Cardinal.

“Being here again and knowing what to expect, obviously it’s the NCAAs and it’s a big deal—it’s win or go home—but we just need to relax and play tennis,” Klahn said. “Not every team gets this opportunity.”

If Stanford defeats UCLA, its road will only get tougher. In the quarterfinals on Sunday, the Cardinal would face the winner of Virginia-Duke. Virginia is the No. 1 team in the nation.

The UCLA match is scheduled to start at 9 a.m. today.