The success that sophomore Donika Bashota saw in the fall has spread to her teammates.

The women’s tennis team swept both Montana State and Idaho last week. Beating Idaho was not a cause for celebration, but instead an opportunity for people to start taking WSU seriously.

Senior Trang Huynh won her singles match against Idaho in three sets, after losing the second set in the tiebreaker.

“We are rivals since they are close to us,” Huynh said. “They won their conference last year and they believe they can compete with us, but I think we did a great job to sweep them.”

Although it is still early in the season, the performance against Idaho should not be overlooked. With the offseason training and rehabilitating, the Cougars have put themselves in a good situation heading into the remainder of their nonconference matches and into Pac-12 play.

“Even though we did not make it to the NCAA tournament [last year] we deserve to be there,” Huynh said.

Captain and senior Lize Leenknecht echoed Huynh’s remarks.

“They were in the NCAA tournament and sweeping them 7-0, shows we deserve to be there as well. We are going to show throughout the season that we deserve to have a spot at the NCAA tournament,” Leenknecht said.

With three months until the Pac-12 Championships, Huynh said the road to the Championships is long and they need to pace themselves and make improvements along the way.

“I would love to improve my serve, because I had tendinitis so I was not serving for a while,” Huynh said.

Leenknecht also wants to use the time before Pac-12 play to make small changes to her game.

“I want to improve on coming to the net more. I like to do that and I need to do it more in matches,” Leenknecht said.

Saturday’s opponents are Montana and Eastern Washington. Both teams lost to WSU 6-1 last year and have added new talent to their rosters as well as WSU. The Cougars face Montana and Eastern Washington at 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Saturday at Hollingbery Fieldhouse.

Reporting by Alex Payton