After suffering a 5-2 loss to Wake Forest Wednesday, the No. 21 men’s tennis team will have a chance to rebound against a duo of ACC teams from Virginia this weekend. The Wolfpack (15-3, 0-1) will host No. 3 Virginia (13-3, 2-0) Friday at 2 p.m. and No. 35 Virginia Tech (10-3, 1-1) at 1 p.m. at the J.W. Isenhour Tennis Complex on Sunday.

After Sunday’s match, the Pack will have played three matches in five days to open the conference season. According to coach Jon Choboy, he has done everything possible in practice to keep his team rested and playing with aggression.

“We don’t practice as long; we just try to keep the intensity up because what you don’t want to do is shut down too much,” Choboy said. “Your bodies are a little beat up. Everybody’s is — the other team too. You want to keep your body in that hitting mode, in that intensity mode, but you just don’t want to do it for a long period of time because we have another match on Sunday.”

The No. 3 Cavaliers is the highest ranked team State will have faced thus far this season, and it boasts the No. 2 player in the nation, junior Somdev Devvarman. Choboy said he feels his team is well prepared for the match, having just played a talented Wake Forest team.

“I don’t think that they’ll be any better than what we saw out of Wake yesterday,” Choboy said. “Wake, by the end of the year, will probably be one of the best teams we’ve played all year.”

The match against Wake Forest was also the first outdoor match of the season for the Pack. With conference matches outdoors with weather permitting, Choboy said he feels his team has an advantage.

“There’s a difference,” Choboy said. “It’s a lot less clean outside. There are a lot of elements you have to deal with, like the wind. But I think we’re a better outdoor team, fortunately, than we are an indoor team. By and large most of our players are a little bit better outside.”

The Wake Forest loss served as a sort of realization for areas of improvement, Choboy said. The Pack won the doubles point, then lost every singles match with the exception of one. Choboy said he would like to see his team do a better job of closing out matches, a skill that comes through experience in tight situations.

“It will be important to go out there and get the doubles,” Choboy said. “And like I said yesterday, finishing a little better when we’re in position to finish sets is important.”

Choboy added he would like to see his players stick to their game in singles, even if opposing players earn winning points.

“When they were more aggressive and starting hitting a few more winners we, instead of being patient, started trying to do a little more ourselves and starting making more errors and got out of our game style a little bit,” Choboy said. “I told them, ‘Don’t go outside the box of what you can do. If the guy hits a good shot, he hits a good shot. You’ve just got to play your game.'”