University of Georgia Athletics
Pasha's Perspective: Reviewing The SEC/Pac-12 Showdown
February 03, 2015 | Men's Tennis
We talked with Coach Diaz and Nathan Pasha about playing Georgia Tech on Friday.
Feb. 3, 2015
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.
By Nathan Pasha
There are lots of notable takeaways after the SEC/Pac-12 Showdown. We beat fourth-ranked UCLA 4-2, and lost to No. 1-ranked USC 4-0. There were things we did well and things we can improve on just like all other weekends we compete. However, before we get to that, we would like to personally thank everyone who came out to support this weekend. We had an awesome crowd and really good support. Our indoor facility was packed against both Pac-12 schools. We had lots of support from sororities, fraternities, students-athletes, and the Atlanta and Athens tennis communities. There were at least 700 people or more both days if I had to guess. Your support means a ton to us. My teammates and I along with our coaches definitely noticed and we appreciate it. Eric Diaz mentioned how sick our atmosphere was, and anyone who knows Eric Diaz knows that he is NOT the easiest guy to draw compliments from!
Against UCLA, we won the doubles points at 2 and 3. Wayne Montgomery and I played together for the first time and played pretty well. We got broken the first game on a swing and complete miss of the ball on Wayne's overhead attempt. Wayne is one of our best players and is a sick tennis player, but he is still a freshman, so I have to give him a hard time by pointing that out. We rebounded and won 6-3, and Austin and Eric clinched the doubles point 7-5. They are continuing to play better which is great for our team. We quickly went up 2-0 after a Wayne victory, and UCLA quickly swung momentum back in their favor by me losing at 1 and Ben Wagland losing at 4. It honestly looked to me for a moment that UCLA would pull off the come-from-behind victory because once Ben and I lost, we were down set at 5 and down a break at 6 singles. However, Paul Oosterbaan fought back at 6 singles to win the first set 7-5, and Nick Wood clinched the match with a 6-1 win in the third.
It was really encouraging to see Paul compete against UCLA because of the way he competed under pressure. UCLA was my first time witnessing Paul compete with real pressure. During the ITA kickoff, when Paul got the chance to play, we already had a big lead and there wasn't much pressure on his match. Paul did a really good job sticking to his identity as a player. He is 6'8 with an imposing game, huge serve, good volleys, and solid groundstrokes. He did a really good job of imposing his game rather than allow the pressure get the better of him and play scared. He ignored the pressure of the situation, trusted his game, and went for his shots which is a hard thing to do knowing that we are depending on him to win his match. Nick was also super impressive in his clinch. Nick is just a fighter. For those who don't know Nick, he has a really disciplined, hard-nosed, tough mentality when it comes to tennis. In practice, he is all about doing consistency drills, not missing a ball, and hitting a million balls to further improve good habits. When it comes to point play, he is all about being disciplined in his patterns. He gets a lot of his tennis habits from his dad, Donnie Wood, who trained at Bollettieri as a junior and played for Arkansas when they were a top-20 program. I mention this because I feel that he won his match primarily because of his toughness. Nick quickly lost the first set but stayed tough and grinded his opponent down and eventually won the match.
We had a tough loss against No. 1 USC. We lost the doubles point at 1 and 2, and we lost singles at 1, 2 and 4. We got outplayed and that's really the bottom line. I can't really give an opinion on doubles because I didn't see enough points of the other matches to develop one. Eric mentioned to me that they had five or six breakpoints, and their opponents hit unreturnable serves on all of them. I lost my singles match 5 and 2. Wayne lost against a guy ranked third in the country but competed very well. It was a competitive match and the crowd really enjoyed the high quality tennis that was played. Nick lost a tough one in the third. He again lost the first set quickly, but stayed tough to force a third and barely lost it by a break 7-5 for the clinch.
We felt confident against USC before the match and felt like we had the matchups to win, but it is obvious that we have some work to do in both singles and doubles. I personally was disappointed in the way I performed the whole weekend. I worked hard before the SEC/Pac-12 weekend and felt well-prepared, confident, and excited for the opportunity, so I envisioned myself preforming a lot better than what I did. In both of my matches, I had two close first sets (7-6 and 7-5) and lost badly in both seconds. After thinking about what I did wrong in the matches, I've concluded that I rushed my shots because I wanted to quickly recapture momentum by winning the second set. I was irritated after losing the first set because I was in a position to win both of them, and I responded in an irritated manner by aiming for smaller margins which resulted in a ton of unforced errors. When competing against good players at the top of the line up, it is really tough to quickly dominate a set and recapture momentum. I have to work on not forcing the situation after losing the first set and be willing to slowly recapture momentum of the match and let it happen naturally in the future.
As a team, we are motivated by both our wins and losses from this weekend and we will continue to improve. Our next match is in Atlanta against Georgia Tech on Friday at 5:00 p.m. It would be great to get some UGA support in Tech's house!
Pasha and the Bulldogs will play at Georgia Tech Friday at 5 p.m.
