After suffering defeat at the hands of USC and UCLA last weekend, the Washington men's tennis team returns home to take on the other set of California schools. The No. 33 Huskies (12-5, 0-2 Pac-10) face No. 51 California and No. 60 Stanford this weekend.

"These matches won't be easy," UW coach Matt Anger said. "We've had some close matches; we just need to put everything together."

Although the scores against USC and UCLA (7-0 and 6-1) were not particularly encouraging, Anger felt that his team held up fairly well against some of the best players in the nation.

"Against USC, we got off to a bad start," he said. "There were some players who competed well, especially Alex Slovic and Patrik Fischer, but otherwise it was a struggle. Against UCLA we played a tougher match, even though we don't have the scores to show it."

While the men's team this year has some returning veterans, about half of the starting lineup is composed of new players. Those who have a few years of college tennis under their belts have proved invaluable to the team, especially senior co-captain Slovic, who has played No. 1 singles and doubles throughout the season and has been steadily climbing in the school record books for doubles and singles wins.

Daniel Chu has also been a key player for the team this season, earning an especially impressive win last weekend over No. 40 Haythem Abid of UCLA, to run his combined doubles and singles win total up to 150, the sixth most of all time at Washington.

But the returning players are not the only reason that Washington is having success this season. New players have been making equally important contributions and have been living up to high preseason expectations. Fischer and freshman Derek Drabble are mainstays in the starting lineup and have been showing their improvement all season.

"Patrik is really coming into his own now — he's playing the way we hoped he would," Anger said. "Derek was a lot more inexperienced to start off, but he's been coming along throughout the past couple of months. He's improved a lot in doubles, and now he's playing well throughout his singles matches as well."

While the matches against Cal and Stanford will be challenging for the Huskies, the fact that they will take place on the familiar purple courts of Bill Quillian Stadium in front of a home crowd will give the men an added boost.

"It's nice to be back home," Anger said. "These are big matches, and I hope we get a lot of people turning out."

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