Spring Break
Men's tennis opens SECs with Auburn
RACHEL BOWERS
Issue date: 4/24/09 Section: Sports
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The Georgia men's tennis team hopes to avoid the early return to Athens it made last year, as its first match in the SEC tournament's second round today.
"We're training hard. We're excited for postseason play," said Josh Varela, senior captain of the Bulldogs. "Now if we lose once, we're out."
The Bulldogs will play Auburn at 4 p.m. in the SEC Tournament, held in Auburn. The Tigers beat Mississippi State 4-1 in the first round Thursday. Head coach Manuel Diaz said Georgia has had a week of brief and "specific" practices and workouts.
"I've tried to keep our practices short this week because our season is so long. It's important not to go into this tournament all hurt now," Diaz said. "I can see that some of the guys are tired, and we kind of pulled back a little bit. I thought we've had very focused workouts this week."
With training sessions short and concise, the Bulldogs were able to center attention on particular parts of their game.
"Coach is just kind of letting us work on what we need to work on," junior Jamie Hunt said. "We've been playing so many matches that we're pretty match tough."
The SEC Tournament title eluded the Bulldogs last year as they lost to Florida in the semifinals. But with a rested and healthy squad intact, the team has hardware on the brain and nothing else.
"We're all just really excited to start playing these big matches because we all know we're capable of bringing home some titles," Varela said.
Heading into the tournament, the team has its sights set on one opponent in particular that it is frothing at the mouth to play again - Ole Miss, the No. 1 seed and the only conference loss blemishing Georgia's 21-2 record.
"We had to go there, at Ole Miss and play them," Hunt said. "It's a tough place to play, but we really felt like we were right in there, and we could've won a few points here and there that determined the match."
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