While hardly a sparkling record, wins and losses rarely tell thewhole tale.

What cannot be disputed is that the San Diego State men’s tennisteam has played one of the most difficult, if not the most difficultearly season schedule.

Picture this: No. 1 Stanford, twice; No. 11 Tennessee; No. 20 SMU;No. 5 UCLA; No. 10 Pepperdine. None of them at home. All within 20days.

“We’ve played pretty well, but we have had the hardest scheduleyou can imagine,” sophomore Felix Hardt said. “But I like our teambecause everyone is really trying to improve and get better. We seemto be on the right track.”

And the folks at ITA tennis association have taken notice. SDSUhas steadily climbed the rankings, up 13 spots and topping out at No.39 this week.

“We have not beaten as many top 10 teams as we wanted, but we playthem well and it’s always close in the end,” first-year Aztec RyanRedondo said. “It will come through eventually.”

The Aztecs hope to continue to improve their ranking when theyhost UCSB this Sunday at SDSU Courts.

–Carlos Manzanillo