The Alabama men’s tennis team lost to the No. 7 Kentucky Wildcats Sunday, 4-1. With the loss, Alabama dropped to 6-10 in the season and 1-5 in Southeastern Conference play. The Tide’s next match is Friday, when it travels to Columbia, S.C., to face the South Carolina Gamecocks. Freshman David Vieyra attributed the loss to a lack of confidence for his team.

“They’ve got great players,” Vieyra said. “I just think that we were struggling a little bit today with our confidence.”

All top three singles spots fell to Kentucky in Sunday’s loss. Senior Ricky Doverspike lost to the Wildcats’ Eric Quigley, ranked as the No. 5 player in the country. Doverspike lost the first two sets to Quigley, 4-6 and 3-6, in the first singles spot. Head coach Billy Pate said the talent level on Kentucky’s team was too much for his team to handle.

“Well first of all [Kentucky is] really good,” Pate said. “They’re a top-10 team, and they really have a sort of murderers’ row at the one-two-three spots at singles.”

Indeed, all of the top three players on Kentucky’s team are nationally ranked. Quigley, Alex Musialek and Anthony Rossi are ranked fifth, 21st and 28th, respectively. They also have plenty of experience, with two seniors and one junior in the top three spots. The Tide kept it close for a while, but in the end, the Wildcats pulled away.

“We were really competitive there in the first sets, but in all three of those second sets, we just didn’t have the juice,” Pate said. “We had chances there. We had good first sets, but in the second it just wasn’t there.”

Still, Pate said he was proud of the way Doverspike competed against his opponent.

“I mean, Quigley is a really good player,” Pate said. “He’ll be a tour player, and he’ll be a really good professional player. But [Doverspike] is close, and he just needs to believe a little bit more and get a break our way.”

Pate said the team has struggled to combine their skills to put together a complete set of matches. “We’re a much better team than our record indicates, and that’s what really hurts for them right now,” he said. “But we have two choices: we can hang our heads and suck and not be as effective next week or the rest of the season, or we can choose to go the other way and stick it out and get better and grow through all of this.”