Feb. 13, 2008
NORMAL, Ill. -
The Illinois State women's tennis team heads to Las Vegas, Nev., Friday to compete against two nationally-ranked teams at the Fertitta Tennis Complex. The Redbirds will face No. 40 UNLV Friday and No. 62 Oklahoma State Saturday. Both matches are set to begin at noon. The `Birds head into the match with a 2-2 record, meanwhile UNLV holds a 4-1 mark and Oklahoma State is 3-1.
Head coach Chris Hoover is looking for his team to play a little more aggressively against the competition.
"We plan on being more aggressive during certain moments of the match," said Hoover. "We also want to be more aggressive when we are ahead and on the serve and returns to serves. We have worked on taking advantage of the point as early on as possible."
In addition to being nationally-ranked teams, but both UNLV and Oklahoma State have nationally-ranked singles players at the top of their roster. UNLV's Elena Gantcheva is ranked No. 40 in the nation and Oklahoma State's Iryna Tkachenko is ranked No. 70. Redbird senior Katri Miller will most-likely face both players at the No. 1 singles spot, but Hoover has not dwelled on this fact in practice.
"We have not been bringing attention to the fact the Katri may compete against ranked players," said Hoover. "We want to keep it as normal as possible for Katri. We want her to play her game, without thinking about who she is playing or what they are ranked."
Hoover has high expectations for the competition; however he believes his team is prepared to face them.
"I expect that these two teams will be very good," said Hoover. "We will have our work cut out for us, but we are going to try very hard to get some points from these nationally-ranked teams. "
