University of Georgia Athletics
Pasha's Perspective: SEC Play Begins
February 25, 2015 | Men's Tennis
Nathan Pasha is a senior from Atlanta on the men's tennis team. He will be writing a blog for Georgiadogs.com throughout the 2015 season.
It has been about two weeks since I wrote the last blog, so I have a fair amount of things to catch you UGA Tennis followers up on. We are currently about a week and a half removed from National Indoors. Overall, making the semifinals and moving up in the rankings to No. 3 was an awesome accomplishment; however, we weren't completely satisfied with that result. We genuinely felt like we had a good opportunity to beat USC and advance to the final. We took the doubles point to give us the early 1-0 lead, but lost four singles matches to ultimately lose 4-1. Wayne and I were still in our matches when the clinch happened. We were in the third sets; he was leading 4-1, and I was at 3-all. We were not far from putting ourselves in a position to beat No. 1 USC and make the final. We just need to keep working hard and keep improving as a team.
We have the talent on our team to make it over the hump by making finals and winning championships rather than only reaching final four. This is the best team that I have been on since my time at UGA. Wayne, Austin, and I anchoring the top of our lineup has been the highest skilled group I have been a part of since my time at Georgia. Nick, Ben, and Paul at the bottom of our line up has been the most talented group we have had in my four years here. Nick won matches for us at No. 2 last year when several of our teammateswere injured, and he was extremely close to qualifying for All-Americans back in the fall. Ben played No. 1 for us his freshman year and was ranked as high as No. 15 in the country, and Paul was a top-ranked national junior, had solid results in the fall, and won Kalamazoo doubles. He understands how to win. While we are happy with making the semifinals at National Indoors, we understand how talented and skilled we are, and we expect to win these tournaments.
Prior to National Indoors, we won only two out of five doubles points, but at National Indoors, we won all three of our doubles points. We took the doubles point from Columbia, Illinois, and top-ranked USC. Our new No. 1 team of Austin and Ben play very well together. Their style of doubles play and their on-court attitudes when playing the game complement each other very well. They are both extremely effective doubles servers and are hard to break. Austin has one of the best returns on the team and puts them in a position to break almost every game. Eric and I did a fair job at No. 2. We both enjoy playing the same kind of doubles. We both like to take over the net and control the center of the court. We did OK at National Indoors, but we could have played even better. We played the way we are capable of in flashes. It's exciting when we play the way we are capable of, and it is frustrating when we don't because Eric and I both know the good doubles we have the ability to play. If I return a little better and not miss random sitter volleys here and there, we should be fine. Wayne and Paul at No. 3 have been great together. I didn't get to watch a lot of their play because they always seemed to finish first, but I do know that they both return well. I'm glad that they mesh well too.
We will continue to focus on making improvements in singles so we can beat a team like a USC after taking the doubles point. We are currently traveling on the sleeper bus to Gainesville, Florida, to play the Gators on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. I'm sure that the atmosphere will be great. We will be playing into the night, the temperature will be in the low 60s, and Florida's crowd will probably be hostile. The fans are loud, and as a team we love playing in loud, rowdy environments. We embrace them. After Florida, we travel to Auburn to take on the Tigers on Saturday at 2:00 p.m. We look forward to the experience, the challenge, and I look forward to sharing it with you in the blog next week.
Pasha and the Bulldogs will play at Florida Thursday at 5:30 p.m. and at Auburn Saturday at 2 p.m.
