By Pritish Behuria The Daily Northwestern
The season's first weekend on the road in the Big Ten is never easy.
But it got off to a great start for Northwestern (7-10, 2-3 Big Ten) when it beat Purdue, 5-2, Friday. Unfortunately for the Wildcats, they could not continue their form the next day as No. 8 Illinois (11-4, 4-0) dominated in a 6-1 victory.
"We did a great job in the singles (Friday), and it was great to get that first road win," coach Paul Torricelli said. "But the Big Ten's always tough, and we ran into a better team (Saturday) and couldn't get the win."
The match against Purdue (8-7, 1-3) saw the Cats get off to a slow start, losing the doubles point.
On the bright side for NU, the doubles duo of sophomore Marc Dwyer and freshman Alex Sanborn broke its five-match losing streak to post the team's only doubles win of the weekend, beating Eric Hodgman and Kurt Zaske, 8-4.
"Marc and I played really well," Sanborn said. "Against Illinois, it was pretty close as well, and our doubles team lost some important points but we're all playing well."
The Cats continued the trend of breaking losing streaks when senior Christian Tempke broke a four-match losing streak, and beat the Boilermakers' Paul Rose for the first time in his career to even the dual at 1-1.
He had lost to Rose in both of their previous meetings.
"It was an important match for me, and I had never beaten Paul before so it was good for my confidence," Tempke said.
NU won five of its six singles matches and clinched the victory when senior Matt Christian beat Zaske in No. 4 singles.
"Since he ended his losing streak earlier, Matt's been playing well," Tempke said. "Matt's a really consistent player and if his game's on, he's hard to beat.
"He plays a very unconventional style of tennis and comes to the net a lot, and most players are not used to that."
On Saturday against the Illini, the Cats lost all three doubles matches.
Even the No. 54 team of Christian and Willy Lock turned out to be no match for Illinois' duo of Kevin Anderson and Ryan Rowe, losing 8-3.
"Our doubles performance has not been as consistent as our singles performance," Tempke said. "Sometimes, we can have really good days - we won the doubles point against a top-ranked team earlier this season - but we should have beaten Purdue."
The Illini dominated the Cats in singles action, winning five of the six matches.
Junior Juan Gomez, the only NU player to lose his singles match the night before, turned it around Saturday and was the only player to register a win for the Cats against the Illini.
Gomez beat Illinois' Brandon Davis 6-3, 6-0 in No. 5 singles to end a six-match losing streak.
Torricelli said Gomez did a great job on the night and looks forward to him finishing the season strong.
The Cats did not go down without a fight against the Illini, and Sanborn and Dwyer took their singles matches to three sets.
"All the teams are very close, and we had a couple of chances, but they were the better team at the end," Torricelli said. "In terms of getting into the NCAA tournament, beating Illinois would have been great, but we did what we expected and beat Purdue."
Reach Pritish Behuria at p-behuria@northwestern.edu.
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