Coming off of back-to-back shutouts of in-conference rivals in the No. 42 Washington State Cougars and No. 15 Washington Huskies last Friday and Saturday, respectively, the No. 3 Stanford women’s tennis team heads to Salt Lake City this Friday to take on the unranked Utah Utes before moving on to the unranked Colorado Buffaloes in Boulder for their season’s penultimate match. Sporting an eleven-game winning streak, the team is now 7-0 in the Pac-12 on the season, and well on its way to a deep run in the Pac-12 Championships later this month.

The No. 12 Stanford men’s team, however, has had a tougher time against Pac-12 competition over the past few weeks, going 2-3 in conference play. After gaining some momentum with a shutout win over Cal Poly last Thursday at home, the team took a tough 2-4 away loss to unranked Utah in Salt Lake City.

The team has been without its top player in sophomore No. 13 Axel Geller over the past few weeks, and his absence has coincided with one of the team’s roughest weekends in recent memory. The Cardinal suffered back-to-back losses against No. 13 UCLA and No. 11 USC on March 29 and 30, respectively; it was the first time the team had suffered two consecutive losses since April 2017.

The team is hoping to get back to 0.500 on the season against Pac-12 opponents with a matchup across the Bay against the No. 41 California Golden Bears, a squad that the Cardinal already defeated once before this season and in four of their last five meetings overall. Back in February, Stanford came out on top over Cal 4-2 thanks to three consecutive straight-set wins in singles by Geller, junior William Genesen and senior Michael Geneder.

The women’s team will kick off the weekend’s match play for the Cardinal at 12:30 p.m. on Friday; their match against Colorado will begin at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday. The men’s team’s match is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on Saturday.

Contact Shan Reddy at rsreddy ‘at’ stanford.edu.