The Ohio State men’s tennis team poses with the Big Ten Championship trophy after the Buckeyes clinched the conference title against Wisconsin on Sunday. Credit: Courtesy of Ohio State Athletics
Winning a title is hard and defending a title is harder, but winning 18 consecutive regular-season conference titles has been the Ohio State men’s tennis team’s hardest challenge yet.
The No. 1 Buckeyes (27-1, 9-0 Big Ten) have continued their dominance in the Big Ten after a 7-0 victory over Wisconsin (1-21, 0-9 Big Ten) on Sunday in Madison, Wisconsin, where they went for the outright title to end their regular season.
“It’s one of our goals at the beginning of the season – we want to win the Big Ten regular season and keep the streaks alive,” fifth-year Robert Cash said. “We also want to win the Big Ten Tournament, and then we want to win the NCAA tournament.”
Ohio State’s win over Wisconsin was its 34th consecutive time defeating the team, and head coach Ty Tucker has never lost to the Badgers in his history at Ohio State, both as a player and a coach.
The Buckeyes have won the Big Ten title every year since 2006, and this streak is the second-longest in any sport in the conference’s history, just behind Iowa’s wrestling team’s streak of 25 consecutive titles from its 1974-98 seasons.
“A lot of legendary Buckeyes come through here, and they know how important that streak is,” fifth-year Andrew Lutschaunig said. “They’ll continue to follow us throughout the entire thing, so it’s very special to be part of such a proud program with such good coaches.”
Cash was part of the clinching doubles team on court one on Sunday, setting the program record of 140 career doubles wins.
“It’s an honor,” Cash said. “It’s definitely something I wasn’t thinking about when I first stepped on campus and then as years went on, I realized I have a shot at it.”
Cash’s win surpassed Ohio State alum Peter Kobelt’s program record of the most doubles wins in program history at 139 in his 2011-14 seasons.
“It’s a privilege to be at the top of the leaderboard,” Cash said. “There’s a lot of great guys that come through the program, so it’s a great feeling, but I know that individual record doesn’t mean as much as the team records at the end.”
The No. 3-ranked duo of senior J.J. Tracy and Cash’s 6-0 doubles record-breaking win happened in just 22 minutes and was the lone recorded doubles win as Wisconsin had to forfeit on court three due to an injury. Freshmen Bryce Nakashima and Preston Stearns were leading 4-2 on court two when the point was secured.
Heading into the Big Ten tournament in Evanston, Illinois, this upcoming weekend, the Buckeyes are 188-2 in conference play and 584-62 overall since the beginning of their title streak.
“I think the biggest challenge going into this tournament is ourselves, we just have to play our game and focus on us,” Cash said. “We know we have a target on our back, we’ve had it all year, being the No. 1 team for the majority of this season.”
Last year, the Buckeyes won the Big Ten tournament title with a 4-0 win over Michigan. This year, they hope to achieve the same goal and take it even further to the NCAA tournament.
“There’s some good teams out there,” Lutschaunig said. ”Illinois has done well, Michigan State is up and coming now. Especially when we were at [That] Team Up North about a month ago, there was about a 10-minute span where they were making a strong push.”
Entering the tournament, the Buckeyes will be the No. 1 seed and will open play at 10 a.m., Friday morning, meeting with either Wisconsin or Penn State.
“We’re really just focused on practice and getting better because you never know when your last match is,” Cash said. “We just have to trust ourselves, trust our training, trust our coaches and leave it all out there.”
To watch the Buckeyes attempt to reclaim their conference tournament title, all matches will be streamed on Big Ten Plus.
