Pawel Gajdzik, NIU men’s tennis head coach, called it the team’s biggest match of the past few years.

Yet even though the Huskies walked away from No. 10 Illinois with a loss, Gajdzik was able to see the building blocks of the program he wants to create being laid down.

The match was played using the same format as the MAC championships with the first team to score four points named winner. This prevented many of the Huskies from playing out their individual matches, instead leaving them unfinished after Illinois claimed its fourth point.

As the match ended, there were two NIU freshmen in the midst of second-set comebacks.

Jurica Grubisic was leading 4-1 in the second set over No. 90 Billy Heiser after dropping the first set 6-2. Pawel Poziomski also led in his second set, 5-0 over No. 110 Marek Czerwinski after a 6-4 first set loss. NIU sophomore Matt Hansen was also battling in singles play as the match ended, down 4-3 in his second set.

Gajdzik has been adamant about the future of the program being in the hands of the young players and was happy to see two freshmen play at such a high level.

“The point of it all is that we see that we can hang with these guys, you know, our guys are right there,” Gajdzik said. “We basically have five guys who have less than three, or one semester of experience in college. From that perspective, we are very excited that we can hang in tough spots with a very good, experienced Illinois team.”

While excited with his team’s play looking to the future, Gajdzik saw a lot of promise for the short term with NIU’s doubles play.

As the match ended, Grubisic and Poziomski were leading 5-4 in their unfinished doubles match against Illinois freshman Ruan Roelofse and junior Meedo El Tabakh. NIU’s other doubles teams fell 8-4 and 8-3, but Gajdzik was pleased with the way they competed against a nationally ranked team.