Michael Jordan used to lose to the Detroit Pistons in the playoffs every year. Eli Manning lost his first six games as an NFL starter and became the New York media’s whipping boy. Roger Federer did not win a grand slam until the sixth year of his storied tennis career.

The moral of the story? If you want to be great, you have to take a beating or two, get up off the canvas and get back to work.

The Binghamton University women’s tennis team is learning that right now.

Coming off a 7-0 drubbing at the hands of Rutgers University, the Bearcats fell to 1-3 with a sobering loss to the Temple Owls in a road dual match this past Saturday. Couple those two losses with a 4-3 loss to Army University, and all of a sudden Binghamton women‘s tennis, highfliers in the fall, are on a three-game losing streak. The match against Temple was one that Binghamton would especially love to forget.

Nothing seemed to go right for the Bearcats against the Owls. The outstanding duo of Anna Edelman and Lauren Bates was 16-2 as a doubles team entering the match and only had four combined losses in singles. They proceeded to lose 8-5 to the tandem of Lucie Pazderova and Theresa Stangl and then they both lost their singles matches in straight sets, 7-6 (3), 6-3 and 6-3, 6-2 respectively. Edelman and Bates will need to improve their level of play in order to return to their winning ways.

Edelman and Bates’ losses set the tone for what would turn out to be a sour day for the Bearcats. Yulia Smirnova and Gayathri Balasundar were beat 8-0 at the second doubles position by Elyse Steiner and Dina Senkina. Erica Rosenblum and Danyelle Shapiro were not much more fortunate, losing 8-4 in their doubles match together against Anastasia Rukavyshnykova and Christine Clermont. Smirnova also lost at third singles, Shapiro at fourth, Rosenblum at fifth and Balasundar at sixth.

For the day, the Bearcats failed to win a single set in nine matches and were outclassed by a superior Temple team that competes in the very strong Atlantic 10 Conference. No team likes to lose 7-0, but the Bearcats did try to rationalize and make sense of their defeat after the match. Balasundar, the team’s captain and lone senior, attempted to voice the sentiments of her team.

“It was a disappointing loss, but we’re still in the early part of our season, so we will continue to work really hard and bring a good fight to every match,” Balasundar said.

The Bearcats look to right the ship at 6 p.m. Friday against the University of Massachusetts in a match that will be held in Ithaca.