The Illinois men’s tennis team finished its season with a 4-1 loss to Vanderbilt in the second round of the NCAA tournament in May. The team has spent much of the offseason playing in individual tournaments across the country. The Daily Illini sat down with head coach Brad Dancer to catch up.

Daily Illini: It’s been a bit since we last saw you guys in the tournament, what have you been up to lately?

Brad Dancer: Lots of recruiting, lots of time with the guys on the court, a little bit of a family vacation and here we are. Seems like summer is almost over.

DI: Yeah, it’s been flying. Some of the guys are in tournaments, right? When we talked last, I think you said some guys were going to Florida?

Dancer: Yeah, we had most of the team down in Florida, and we played a number of tournaments down there. We played a tournament up in Winnetka (Ill.) on the north side of Chicago, and last week was kind of an off week for tournaments, but now they’re all down in Joplin, Mo., at the moment.

DI: So are you actively coaching them through this, or are they kind of on their own?

Dancer: Not this particular tournament, but we will be for the rest of the summer. So they go from Joplin to Godfrey (Ill.) to Decatur (Ill.) to Edwardsville (Ill.) to Bloomington, Ind. So it’s five weeks in a row for the guys coming up here.

DI: Jeez, no real off time for them. And you also said you’ve been doing recruiting, is that for next year or do you already know who you’re looking at?

Dancer: We’re recruiting all of the time. We’ve got a one- to five-year window on recruiting, anywhere from people we think can help us out this year to all the way up to five years down the road.

DI: That’s probably pretty tough to speculate that far into the future?

Dancer: I think it’s very difficult to speculate that far, yep.

DI: I can imagine. I want to talk a little about Wimbledon, what did you think about Andy Murray? It seemed like a huge moment for him and all of England.

Dancer: It’s a big moment for him. It’s interesting to me. I don’t understand why we care about Kate Middleton so I’m not sure exactly why it’s as big of a moment as it’s been. But I honestly would have liked to see (Roger) Federer go a little further, he’s a guy I always pull for at Wimbledon and expand on his record. But at the same time, it’s a great win for Murray, and Murray and (Novak) Djokovic are starting to look like the class of men’s tennis right now. It could be a little bit of a changing of the guard.

DI: Right, because it used to always be Federer and Rafeal Nadal, those were the big two?

Dancer: Exactly. And I still think Nadal is still going to be somewhat unbeatable on clay but these other guys, Djokovic and Murray, on the hard courts and grass courts are going to continue to be big forces, and I think you’re going to see guys like (Tomas) Berdych and (Juan Martin) del Potro and even Kevin (Anderson) has a chance to sneak in there. Kevin has had a fantastic year and has really been stepping up.

DI: You mention Kevin, are there other former Illini guys still in the professional leagues?

Dancer: We’ve got over a dozen guys that are playing at various different levels. So I think it’s fun to follow those guys and keep track of them. The most notable right now is obviously Kevin and Rajeev Ram, (who) is also a top-100 player at the moment. So those two are the most notable right now, but there’s a bunch of alumni and our current guys are building their world rankings as well.

DI: Do you ever tell your guys on the team right now to flip on Wimbledon, for example, and watch how players play certain balls or do you ever use professional tennis for coaching points?

Dancer: All the time.

Stephen can be reached at [email protected] and @steve_bourbon.