Six years ago, UA tennis coach Clancy Shields told his boss, former athletic director Greg Byrne, that the Wildcats would win a conference championship in five to six years.
The 2017 men’s tennis team was 9-16 and winless in conference play. Now, five seasons later, the 14th-ranked Wildcats have a 20-5 overall record and finished with a perfect 7-0 record in conference play, securing their first ever regular-season conference championship.
Shields kept his word.
“We had tears,” Shields said Monday as he spoke to reporters outside McKale Center. “It was really a special moment for our seniors and for our whole team for that matter. The really intimate things for me are that ride home from the airport. You’re driving home and you just realize really what happened, the magnitude of what happened and the five years that it took, six years that it took to do that.”
Arizona will continue its historic season in the Pac-12 Championships, which begin Wednesday in Ojai, California.
Arizona ventured into the final weekend of the regular season controlling its own destiny. A forfeited match against UCLA earlier in the season meant that Arizona needed to win both matches against Oregon and Washington to be crowned the regular-season champs.
The entire team knew the weight of the moment.
“I’ve never seen a team so nervous,” Shields said. “I was nervous, but that experience of dealing with nerves is priceless. You have this enormous weight on your shoulders to accomplish something that’s never happened in your program history.”
Arizona beat Oregon 4-2 on Friday, setting up a win-and-you’re-champs match against Washington
Junior Nick Lagaev secured the final point of the match to give the Wildcats the 4-1 victory and complete the weekend sweep. Shields was met with a post-match celebratory Gatorade shower.
“It was such a good feeling,” senior Carlos Hassey said. “My first year here, we didn’t even win a single match so coming out and being able to play on our own terms and be able to go out there and play for an actual title just really meant a lot.”
Arizona's men's tennis team celebrates after clinching its first-ever Pac-12 regular-season championship with Sunday's win over Washington.
But the job isn’t finished yet. A conference tournament championship remains at stake and solid performance this week could set the Wildcats up to host the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. The top 16 teams in the country host.
“Success without celebration is a sin,” Shields said. “We celebrated it, but we’ve refocused today. We know what’s in front of us. We’ve got some really tough teams and we would love to go back to back like our men’s basketball program and win the regular season and then do it in the tournament.”
The Wildcats made it to the semifinals in last year’s conference tournament before falling to USC. Arizona then made it to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament before losing to eventual Final Four team Tennessee.
All that postseason should set the Wildcats up for more success this season.
“I think with the experience from last year and being able to get some experience with Sweet 16 and all that kind of stuff really helped us prepare for this moment,” Hassey said. “All that experience is really going to help us.”
Arizona's Filip Malbasic wears his 2022 Pac-12 Championship hat while talking during Monday's news conference on campus.
Arizona has never played in the Pac-12 Tournament as the No. 1 seed. It comes with some pressure.
“I think it’s difficult,” senior Filip Malbasic said. “This is the first time we are the first seed but, to be honest, we’re not trying to think about who’s the first seed or who we’re playing. I think that’s why we’ve been very successful this year and even last year, we just tried to focus on us, focus on our games at every point and just control the things that we can control and if we win, we win.”
Shields echoed Malbasic’s thoughts.
“I’m excited for it. I just like our players experiencing something new, playing with a target on their back and having to take everyone’s best shot,” he said. “I just think that makes you better and makes you sharper and makes you more competitive for the NCAA Tournament. We’re going to need that if we want to have a deep run.”
But first is the Pac-12 Tournament. The Wildcats will play the winner of Oregon and Washington on Thursday; it’s the same teams they just defeated.
“It’s so hard to beat someone twice in a row, and it’s even harder to do it within a week,” Shields said.
“I always say that culture wins. We’ve been saying this repeatedly, culture wins. If you look at our team, we’ve got some good players, but we don’t have any, all-stars that totally knocked it out of the park. We have a bunch of guys that step up and we find our way to four points.
“That’s our program. We focus on our culture, we focus on the team as a unit and the culture wins. So that’s what we’re gonna preach going into this week is that culture wins. We know it’s hard to beat a team twice in a row. But we believe in our culture and we believe what can happen.”
