For the men’s tennis team, the 2006-07 regular season was a turbulent one.

With nagging injuries and inconsistency constantly biting at its heels, the team certainly faced an uphill battle heading into postseason play. Sporting a healthy lineup and a renewed sense of urgency, though, the Illini mounted their dark horse and orchestrated a playoff performance that stunned the nation on their way to the national finals.

As the 10th seed in the NCAA tournament field, the team had its work cut out for it. After ending Western Michigan’s 11-match winning streak in the first round, the Illini followed with a come-from-behind victory against an impressive Michigan squad.

Matchups with three top-ten teams awaited the Illini, beginning with the Round of 16, but the players recall a feeling of invincibility that stayed with them all the way to the championship.

“We believed that we could win it,” said Ryan Rowe, a junior at the time. “You can’t go into the tournament and not believe. Throughout the season we hadn’t really proved that much due to injuries and not doing as well as we could have, so we put ourselves in the position to do the best we possibly could.”

The team responded to the steep odds by rattling off victories over No. 3 Baylor and No. 7 Mississippi, as well as a 4-2 victory over Big Ten rival No. 2 Ohio State, which had already soundly defeated the Illini twice earlier in the year. The three victories vaulted the team into the finals, which the program had reached only once before in its history.

For then-junior Ruben Gonzales, the victory over the Buckeyes was an especially exhilarating accomplishment.

“Ohio State was probably the coolest college match I’ve ever played,” Gonzales said. “They’re big rivals of ours, and we beat them in such a big match.”

The magic of the team’s Cinderella run expired, however, when the undefeated, top-ranked Georgia Bulldogs decisively dismissed the Illini in the championship in front of a raucous crowd in Athens, Ga.

Such an impressive run even left some of the players in awe of their accomplishments.

“I really had no expectations of how far we were going to go,” Gonzales said. “I thought we were going to lose to Michigan in the second round, but we ended up beating them and getting to the finals. It was like each time we won it was a surprise as we snuck into the finals.”

Though their run as a team had come to a close, the All-American duo of Rowe and junior Kevin Anderson then turned their attention to the individual competition that followed team play.

Rowe and Anderson managed to advance to the finals of the doubles championship for the second straight year, becoming the first pair in NCAA history to play in the finals with the same partner in back-to-back years.

There was certainly no shortage of team or individual accolades for the 2007 Illini, but the loss in the finals still sits uneasy in the stomachs of returning players as the team prepares for 2008.

“We all want to get back there,” Rowe said. “That’s the only thing we think about.”

Illini head coach Brad Dancer capped off his recollection of last year’s dream season with a simple, yet compelling statement.

“The guys are hungry,” Dancer said. “They want to win the national title. We have to go out and figure out how we’re going to do that.”