The Ball State University men's tennis team took care of shorthanded Chicago State University 7-0 Friday, gaining important position in the Mid-American Conference Tournament seeding.
Ball State will already share at least a tie for the No. 2 seed in the tournament, but with a win at Northern Illinois University today, Ball State will take the second seed outright.
Due to circumstances throughout the program, Chicago State only had five players to work with for Friday's match.
"[Chicago State is] in a state of flux right now," coach Bill Richards said. "They are trying to rebuild their program and we knew they would be thin. We decided to play different players and didn't put in a lot of our regulars."
Despite the circumstances of the match, Richards was still looking for a high level of play coming off his team's loss to the University at Buffalo.
Richards said his team played a solid match and did what it had to do. He said it was a difficult match to get a read on because of Chicago State's situation, but today's match will tell them more.
Northern Illinois enters today's match having lost four out of its last five matches, two of those in MAC play.
"There are three other teams that are right there with us all year," said Richards. "Northern is a little behind, but they are not a team to be taken lightly."
After the Northern Illinois match, Ball State will have five days until the MAC Tournament begins in Muncie. There is an air of excitement around the team this year about the possibility of another banner being raised.
"We are really excited about next week and want to rebound after last year," Andres Monroy said. "This team isn't necessarily a better team talent level wise than last year, but we are closer both on and off the court and that brings a lot of good energy to the team."
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