[media-credit name=’UW Athletic Communications’ align=’alignright’ width=’336′][/media-credit]Following a road trip to Penn State and Indiana last weekend, the No. 33 Wisconsin women’s tennis team will return home Saturday and Sunday to host No. 54 Iowa and No. 65 Minnesota as their Big Ten season continues. The Badgers split matches last weekend, prevailing 4-3 in a closely contested affair against the Nittany Lions before dropping 5-2 to the Hoosiers in a match marked by several close sets.

Despite going 1-1 last weekend, Wisconsin bumped up in the rankings two spots this week. On the personal side, Katie McGaffigan and Caitlin Burke also took personal jumps, graduating to the No. 91 and No. 87 spots, respectively. McGaffigan had represented the Badgers in number-one singles all season, with Burke playing out of the second spot, until this past weekend when they flipped seeds. Though the two collectively went 1-3 on the weekend trip, each fought through a duo of tightly contested matches. Head coach Patti Henderson is yet to announce who will be playing out of which flight this weekend.

“In all honesty, if you had told me going into this weekend that we would have been 1-3 at positions 1 and 2 for us, I would have said no way,” Henderson said. You know, we’re going to be 2-2 at a minimum and hopefully 3-1 or 4-0. Erin and I haven’t decided exactly how we’re going to handle that.”

Playing out of fourth flight singles, sophomore Kaylan Caiati currently boasts of a team leading eight-game win streak, having not lost a single set since February 25.

“Well, Kaylan Caiati is every tennis player’s worst nightmare basically,” Henderson said. “I look at it as, you know, you’re going to play somebody, and you’ve got what’s between their ears, their head, their heart, and their skill level. And Kaylan Caiati’s heart and head are unbelievable — never in doubt, never questioned.”

But on the doubles front, Caiati is quick to note that her and Burke — a relatively recently minted pairing — still have room to improve in the second flight. Coming off of a duo of losses last weekend, including a 9-7 fall to Indiana where they enjoyed a match point before dropping behind, Caiati sees room for personal improvement.

“I just really would like to improve on my doubles game,” Caiati said. “There’s times when I feel confident about it, and there are other times when I realize that there [are] parts of my game that I need a lot of work on.”

In Iowa and Minnesota, the Badgers face a duo of teams with no seniors in their lineups, with the Hawkeye squad being composed entirely of freshmen and sophomores.

“I think Iowa is a pretty young team — so is Minnesota. I think Iowa has just a couple of people returning; they have a new coach,” senior Lindsay Martin said. “And that is either really good for us — they are young and inexperienced — or they’re really excited and eager to go out there and play.”

The Hawkeyes will also enter Madison under the leadership of a relatively new coach, though Henderson is well acquainted with him.

“Iowa has a new coach who’s actually a friend of mine, a fellow Canadian, Daryl Greenan, and he just stepped in at sort of like Thanksgiving time with their program, after they had been coachless for the fall,” Henderson said. “I think he worked at Alabama as an assistant coach there, where Jenny Mines and he had done a great job and got that team ranked into the Top 20, so he knows what he’s doing. He knows what it’s about.”