Mac Gifford loves to talk about his tennis team. But sometimes the loquacious Syracuse head coach has difficulty finding a way to put his feelings into words.

After beating Seton Hall, 7-0, on Saturday in South Orange, N.J., the Orangewomen were riding high heading into their match at Rutgers on Sunday in Piscataway, N.J. But a 4-3 loss to the Scarlet Knights kept Syracuse from earning its ninth win of the year, which would have matched last season’s win total. The near miss crushed Gifford and his Orangewomen (8-6, 4-2 Big East).

‘Don’t remind me,’ Gifford said. ‘We’re not real happy about how we played this weekend. On Sunday, we didn’t know what was going on. We had that squirrel in the headlight look (against Rutgers).’

Did he really say squirrel?

‘If I was better at analogies,’ he said, ‘I’d probably be involved in the creative-writing program.’

Fortunately for writing students, Gifford’s sticking to tennis, and in Saturday’s match against Seton Hall, his coaching did SU justice.

Against the Pirates, Syracuse was on top of its game, winning all nine matches — six singles, three doubles. Only junior Jessica Schlosser, in her win over Erin Burke, and sophomore Trine Lise Juliussen, in her defeat of Viviana Figueroa, allowed their matches to reach a third set. Neither player, though, allowed her opponent to win a game in the third set.

While the 7-0 score seems to indicate that the Orangewomen cruised, senior Masha Kabanova doesn’t think SU dominated the match.

‘Sometimes the score just doesn’t say much,’ Kabanova said. ‘No tennis match is easy. It’s always very competitive. Even our match at Seton Hall was very, very close. Just one point here or there (made the difference).’

After completing its shutout of the Pirates on Sunday, Syracuse may have lost its focus in Sunday’s match against Rutgers.

The Orangewomen were in trouble from the beginning. Syracuse dropped two of the three doubles matches, losing the doubles point for only the fifth time all season.

Syracuse went on to split the singles matches, with Daniela Kaluskova defeating Andrea Weckstein (6-2, 6-3), Kabanova topping Carissa Sommerland (4-6, 7-6, 6-3), and Kristine Bech Holte beating Ketevan Shmakova (4-6, 7-5, 10-5). But the Orangewomen could not overcome the doubles deficit, making them 0-5 in matches when they have lost the doubles point.

‘We kept saying to ourselves, ‘There’s no way we’re going to lose,’ ‘ junior Alexa Konstand said. ‘Then it got closer and closer, and all of a sudden, we were down to match points and we couldn’t hold a match.’

Unlike his team, Gifford wasn’t as surprised at Rutgers’ success.

‘You’re playing a team that wants to beat you so badly, because they’ve been losing to you for the last three, four or five years,’ Gifford said. ‘Their seniors are just going, ‘We ain’t losing to these guys again.’ “

For the first time all year, Gifford believed that while both sides played well, his team was slightly intimidated by the crowd noise in The Bubble at Rutgers.

‘(Rutgers) had a very loud crowd, indoors, in a bubble,’ Gifford said. ‘We play that match here and take out the home-court advantage, we might win that match, 6-1.’

Gifford couldn’t hide his disappointment. And he happened to know an analogy that described exactly why his team failed to defeat Rutgers and come away with its ninth win.

‘We could have eliminated Rutgers entirely from the postseason picture,’ Gifford said. ‘They just came out fighting for life. They were just clawing for it.’

Published on April 1, 2003 at 12:00 pm