The team has lost four straight and fell to 11-14 on the season, 4-3 against Big East competition.,”

The women's tennis team will back into the Big East tournament this week after dropping a pair of weekend games to conference opponents, losing 4-3 to DePaul Friday and 7-0 to No. 2 Notre Dame Sunday.

The team has lost four straight and fell to 11-14 on the season, 4-3 against Big East competition.

Senior Maria Calbeto said the DePaul loss was especially difficult.

"I thought we should have won," Calbeto said. "It was just hard to let it get away."

Calbeto lost 6-1, 6-3 at No. 2 singles against DePaul and also came up on the short end of an 8-6 doubles point with sophomore Lauren Little at No. 1 doubles.

After losing the doubles point, Marquette rallied to take a 3-2 lead after junior Shannon Brown defeated DePaul's Bojana Murisic 6-1, 6-2 at No. 4 singles, but Kirsten Gambrell's win over Calbeto evened the score and Anja Mihaldinec's 7-5, 6-2 defeat of sophomore Robin Metzler sealed the game.

Head coach Jody Bronson said although her team's effort was present during the losses, the same was not always true of its focus.

"We just didn't play smart," she said. The DePaul game "really hurt."

Against Notre Dame, Calbeto said Marquette put together a tough effort against an "awesome" opponent.

A few days earlier, the Irish had dropped a game to Northwestern for just their second loss of the season. They improved to 23-2 with the win over Marquette.

"They have a great team," Calbeto said. "I thought (we) fought pretty hard."

For Marquette, fighting and winning were two different matters Sunday: The team did not take a set in singles play and dropped all three doubles matches by a combined score of 24-5. Only freshman Elly Strother mounted a serious challenge, losing 7-6, 6-2 to Notre Dame's Katie Potts at No. 5 singles.

Brown's 6-1, 6-3 loss at No. 3 singles snapped her 13-match singles winning streak. Calbeto lost 6-1, 6-2 at No. 1 singles, and dropped the No. 1 doubles point 8-1 with Brown.

“