Saturday the NIU women’s tennis team will be hosting a “pretty good” Eastern Michigan squad with the hopes of continuing their winning ways.

NIU is on a bit of a hot streak, coming off of a thorough thrashing of North Star Conference foe Wisconsin-Green Bay, and Huskie tennis coach Patty Groth is feeling pretty good about her team’s chances against EMU.

“They’re a pretty good team and we lost to them last year,” Groth said. “But, we are much (healthier) now and it should be a good match—we’ll be tested.”

Groth has good reason to feel good about her team, and especially of NIU’s play lately. The Huskies’ dominance over UW-GB didn’t really surprise Groth.

“I’m not surprised at the fact that we won or at the score (9-0 dual victory),” Groth said. “I’m just a little surprised at how fast each of the points came. We really dominated.”

NIU (7-5) has its players as healthy as they’ve been all season and are playing excellent team tennis, Groth said, all the more reason for her to feel confident about the rest of the season.

“If we were at full strength earlier in the season, we could’ve won some of those earlier matches that we lost by a point or two,” Groth said. “But everyone’s working together now on and off the court and the players really get along well.

It’s hard to pinpoint one individual who has led us because they are all doing so well on and off the court,” Groth said.

“In tennis, everyone is doing the same thing on the court, one at a time, for the sake of the team. So I can only point to one factor and that’s the whole team.”

The Huskies are looking to gain momentum against EMU and against Bradley Sunday heading into the final month of play. That momentum is especially important as they try for a fourth-straight NSC title in May.