The University of Washington men's tennis team started Pac-10 conference play this weekend against two of the best teams in the nation: USC and UCLA. The duo showed that their reputations are well deserved with dominant wins over the Huskies.

After sweeping both teams at home in thrilling fashion last season, the UW (12-5, 0-2 Pac-10) was unable to repeat that accomplishment, falling 7-0 to No. 9 USC on Friday and 6-1 to No. 11 UCLA on Saturday.

The players knew going in that this weekend's road trip would be a challenge.

"It's going to be tough," said senior co-captain Alex Slovic before the matches. "They're away matches, and we have a lot of freshmen on the team this year. I really have no expectations for the outcome."

Although Slovic was winless this weekend, he had some close matches against top-ranked players. In the match against USC, he came within a few games of defeating Dejan Cvetkovic, the No. 42-ranked player in the country. Slovic rallied from a first-set loss to take the second before ultimately falling 6-3, 4-6, 6-4.

Slovic and partner Daniel Chu also suffered their first loss of the season at the No. 1 doubles position in the match against USC, just barely losing to Cvetkovic and Gary Sacks in a tiebreaker 8-7 (2). After a loss at UCLA as well, Slovic and Chu are now 7-2 in doubles matches this season.

Chu provided the Huskies with their only point of the weekend with an impressive straight-sets victory over UCLA's Haythem Abid, who is currently No. 40 in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association rankings. His 6-4, 7-5 victory was the first singles win by a Husky over a nationally-ranked opponent this season.

Sophomore Patrik Fischer of the UW came very close in both of his matches as the No. 4 single. Against USC, Fischer pushed his opponent to a first-set tiebreaker, where he fell 8-6 and then lost the second set 7-5. In the next day's match, Fischer took UCLA's Philipp Gruendler to three sets, with the third going to a tiebreaker that he lost by a mere two points.

Although the Huskies are now 0-2 in conference play, they see the start of the Pac-10 schedule as a welcome challenge.

"We've definitely been thinking about starting our Pac-10 matches," said coach Matt Anger. "The matches take on a life of their own — they're very dramatic. The veterans look forward to it."

The Huskies will return home this weekend for matches against Cal and Stanford.

Reach reporter Risa Pavia at sports@thedaily.washington.edu