EAST LANSING, Mich. — There was a fleeting moment Sunday when Erin Jobe and Liz Carpenter, holding down the Badgers' third doubles match against a feisty duo of Michigan State opponents, knotted the affair at 7-7, forcing a tiebreaker.
Within minutes, the tiebreaker, too, was evenly scored at 7-7. And looking up, one may have cared to notice that Jobe and Carpenter were working on the seventh court at Michigan State's tennis center.
Though craps was not the NCAA-sanctioned sport at hand, it was tough to ignore the Badger-happy coincidence of that quintuple of sevens as, just moments later, Wisconsin would claim the match 8-7(9), a victory that marked the first successful effort of an ailing squad during a weekend frame that had, just 24 hours earlier, revealed a 7-0 loss at the hands of the University of Michigan Wolverines.
"It was a big confidence boost for me. It really got me excited to go into the singles match," Jobe said.
"It felt like, 'OK, we can pull out some wins here.' It was really good to come back from behind and be in that close situation and be able to pull it out."
Coming off that shutout in Ann Arbor, the Badgers found two clutch match victories against the Spartans, despite still being forced to play their entire roster up a slot, as team ace Caitlin Burke continues to watch from the sidelines with a rib injury.
But on Sunday, the team seemed to finally come to terms with its glorified challenge, and Morgan Tuttle and Chelsea Nusslock earned key victories en route to a narrow 5-2 defeat to the Spartans that was perhaps as promising as any loss might be.
"I was shell-shocked by what I saw on Saturday at Michigan. It was not at all what we had been working on. … It was very disappointing," UW head coach Patti Henderson said Sunday. "[Michigan State], compared to [Michigan], was night and day. … Today's match was a great match. They laid it on the line. They played with all the heart they had. … Every match we lost was in three sets."
The day's first outright winner, Tuttle handled the Spartans' Marianne Eelens 6-4, 6-0 in a quick victory that marked the day's only simple affair. All five other singles matches would split sets, leading to a lengthy series of third frames as Jobe, Carpenter and Caiati dropped 6-2, 5-7, 6-3; 6-2, 2-6, 6-3 and 6-2, 2-6, 6-4 matches to Sarah Andrews, Stephanie Kebler and Christine Bader, respectively.
With the affair already decided in the Spartans' favor, Beck and Spartan Jessica Baron forewent their third set in favor of a match tiebreaker, with Baron emerging as the ultimate winner, 6-4, 6-7(4), 1-0(6).
"I think [my victory] set a good momentum for everyone else," Tuttle said. "[Anyone could have] gotten [the] win [and] it would have been good."
Meanwhile, on the second court, Nusslock and Michigan State's Pascale Schnitzer entered their third frame before the MSU victory had been sealed. In a match where Schnitzer was frequently overruled by the chair umpire on a series of questionable line calls, Nusslock dropped the first set 6-3 before rallying to claim the second 6-4 and then taking the third 6-3 for the Badgers' second victory on the day.
"It was good to see everybody out there really working hard," Jobe said. "Everybody fought."
Mac VerStandig also reported on this story from Ann Arbor, Mich.
