The No. 21 Harvard men’s tennis team will begin this weekend’s two regional rounds of the NCAA tennis tournament with a match against Quinnipiac, a team as fresh and inexperienced as the Crimson is veteran and established. Entering tomorrow’s contest, the Bobcats (12-4, 8-0 Northeast) will have everything to gain at the Beren Tennis Center—but will the Crimson (17-6, 7-0 Ivy) feel the pressure of having everything to lose?

Harvard enters the contest as the tournament’s 16-seed, an honor coming on the heels of the team’s Ivy title and unblemished conference record.

The squad also boasts two top-100 players—No. 36 co-captain David Lingman and No. 89 junior Jonathan Chu—both of whom have been chosen to compete in the forthcoming individual NCAA competitions.

Three players—Chu, Lingman and sophomore Brandon Chiu—are first-team All-Ivy. Lingman was even the Ivy Player of the Year, the senior’s second such honor in as many years.

“We’re the underdogs, and there’s no question about that,” said Quinnipiac coach Mike Quitko, whose eight-man lineup will feature five freshmen to Harvard’s probable four seniors and two juniors. “But my team is young, and maybe, being young, they’ll just be foolish enough to think they can win.

“And you never know what happens if teams think they can win.”

The Bobcats have won their last three contests, dropping only three dual match points along the way.

And as Quitko mentioned, the team has done so with a remarkably young squad, relying for much of the season on three freshman and two sophomores in the singles lineup as well as four freshman and a sophomore in doubles.

Bobcats rookies have won 38 matches this season, and of the two seniors and one junior on the Bobcats, only one—senior Eric Raymundo—has played consistently, accumulating an 8-2 record this spring between the fifth and sixth spots.

“[Harvard] will definitely be one of the better teams we’ve played if not the best team that we’ve played,” Quitko said. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for us, we have nothing to lose...so I think we’re going to come in very relaxed.”

The Crimson has a legitimate shot at advancing to the Sweet 16—though that opportunity becomes a bit more pressing because the team is loaded with talented senior soon to graduate.

And as Quitko said, anything can happen in a day.

“We’re looking to take Qunnipiac as seriously as we have taken any other team this year,” Chu proclaimed.

Harvard has begun attending two shorter practices a day rather than one long one in order to focus on specifics and match-play.

“Fine-tuning at this point, refining, rather than brute-force drilling,” explained Chu.