NU’s singles players failed to fill some big shoes.
In the aftermath of Northwestern men’s tennis’ February upset of No. 8 Duke that improved the Wildcats’ record to 2-5 on the year, I wrote that the win “could turn out to be an inflection point for their season.”
As it turned out, however, the Duke result proved to be more of an anomaly than a turning point. A year after reaching the second round of the NCAA Tournament and finishing with a 21-10 (7-2 B1G) record, the team did not come close to reaching those heights again.
Hampered by a demoralizing losing streak in the middle of the season which saw the ‘Cats fail to notch a single point for six straight matches, they were unable to recover for conference play and ultimately capped off a year in which they went 10-19 (3-6 B1G) with a loss in the first round of the NIT.
This season was always likely to be a transitional one. The top four singles players in last year’s lineup that beat UCLA in the first round of the Tournament and so nearly knocked off No. 4 Kentucky in a 4-3 loss were all graduate students using their last year of eligibility. Included in this group were Steven Forman and Ivan Yatsuk, who were nationally ranked at No. 29 and No. 66 respectively at the time.
Gleb Blekher, who dramatically sealed the UCLA victory with a 3-6, 6-0, 6-4 win at No. 6 singles, spent the majority of this season’s non-conference slate as the team’s No. 1 player. Presley Thieneman, last year’s No. 5, took over from Blekher after 10 matches and remained at No. 1 for the rest of the season.
Entering this campaign with the bottom four singles spots guaranteed to be occupied by players who played almost no singles matches the year before, it was always going to be a tough ask for Northwestern to be highly competitive in the Big Ten. Nevertheless, for one shining moment against Duke at the Combe Tennis Center, it looked like the team was capable of putting something special together.
In that match, the top of NU’s singles lineup shone brightly. Thieneman dominated his match, 6-2, 6-2, at No. 2. Blekher took the opening set and looked mightily dangerous against a top 500 ATP player in Duke No. 1 Garrett Johns. Junior Felix Nordby, who consistently played at the No. 5 spot his freshman year but was rarely included in the lineup last season, cleaned up his opponent, 6-3, 6-2 at No. 4. And senior Saiprakash Goli, who had patiently waited to make an impact for his first three years on the team, clinched the victory at No. 3 in a gutsy third set tiebreak.
Later that day, the ‘Cats secured a 2-1 weekend with a win over UIC and followed that up the next weekend with another 2-1 homestand, including a win over Clemson. Then, abruptly, the losing streak began. Starting with an empty-handed trip to Tennessee and ending with three losses to Top-10 opponents in four matches, the team saw all of its momentum halted.
It was less that the team was losing — beating No. 8 Harvard, No. 4 Columbia or No. 1 Ohio State was always going to be an extremely tall order — and more the manner in which it lost. Failing to claim a single point over six matches despite repeatedly putting itself in positions to win individual matches must have been deeply demoralizing.
It may not have been a coincidence that this barren period came immediately after coach Arvid Swan’s decided to move Thieneman to the No. 1 spot and relegate Blekher. While certainly an honest and justifiable move, Thieneman started the season 6-3 at the No. 2 spot, and the material effect of this change was decreasing Northwestern’s chances of winning either one of the No. 1 and No. 2 matches.
After winning his first match at No. 1 vs. IUPUI, Thieneman went on an eight-match losing streak, albeit with impressive performances in matches against two players who were both ranked No. 22 nationally at the time they played: Cooper Williams of Harvard and Ozan Baris of Michigan State. The Williams match went unfinished with Thieneman up 6-3, 5-5, while Baris narrowly claimed a win in a third set 10-point tiebreak (instead of a full set), 6-7 (2), 7-5, [10-8]. Thieneman would go on to post an 11-13 singles record on the season.
Meanwhile, Blekher’s form did not benefit from the move down to No. 2, and he ended the season 4-15 (2-10 at No. 2) in completed matches. He typically started matches well, hitting big, aggressive groundstrokes and seeking to take the match to his opponent, but he often fell away between the tail end of the first set and the middle of the second. Blekher won the first set in 11 of the 27 matches he played but converted that into just four wins.
Goli put up a 9-13 record at No. 3, using his gritty, defensive game style to get a solid return on his first season consistently in the singles lineup. Nordby, the usual No. 4, had a similar season, finishing 10-12 but coming in strong at the end of the season following a rough 1-5 start.
The bottom two spots brought little consistency for Northwestern. Swan started the season with freshmen Greyson Casey and Jackson Caldwell at No. 5 and No. 6 respectively but swapped out Caldwell for sophomore Chad Miller after just two matches.
Later in the season, freshman Nick Herdoiza and junior Max Bengtsson also saw action. Bengtsson made his first appearance of the season on March 31 against Chicago State but wound up finishing the season as the team’s regular No. 5 with a respectable 4-4 record. As a whole, that group of five players went a combined 14-27.
The team’s losing streak was finally snapped with a 4-2 win over Penn State, but the rest of Big Ten play was largely disappointing. The ‘Cats notched two more conference wins — one against a desperately struggling Wisconsin team and the other against Purdue on senior day. In the Big Ten Tournament, they beat Wisconsin again (this time, the Badgers only brought five healthy players to Evanston) before losing comprehensively to No. 29 Michigan.
NU was handed a lifeline when it received an invitation to the UTR Sports NIT Championship but was unable to capitalize the opportunity. It lost in the first round to No. 59 Santa Clara, with Thieneman and Bengtsson getting themselves in the win column.
Looking forward, Thieneman, Blekher and Goli are all seniors but have the option to return as graduate students for a fifth year. Nordby will undoubtedly be a crucial part of next season’s team, not only in the singles lineup but also reprising his role as part of the No. 1 doubles team (he played alongside Blekher this year). Bengtsson might just have established himself in the lineup, while Casey, Miller, Caldwell and Herdoiza have plenty yet to prove.
Although there is a chance that the team loses a few — or even none — of its starting pieces, each player must take a step forward from a season in which no player finished with a positive singles record. The ‘Cats will also be bolstered by the strength of its newest recruiting class, which Tennis Recruiting Network ranks at No. 21 in the country.
Carter Pate is the crown jewel of the class as a blue chip recruit ranked at No. 48 nationally and first in South Carolina. Joining him is five-star recruit Vincent Yang and four-star Lucas Coriaty, ranked at No. 64th and No. 89 respectively.
These additions give Swan reason to believe that the future of his team may be brighter than it appears on the surface. Whether that comes to fruition will depend on the ability of both his newest recruits and current starters to develop at the pace of the team’s Big Ten rivals.