The No. 11 Stanford women’s tennis team (6-0) is one match away from Pac-10 dual play, but before it gets there, it must take down the Hawaii Rainbow Wahine (1-6) in a match rescheduled from a month ago. With good luck, the rain predicted for Wednesday will hold off long enough to allow play to occur.

With the most recent ITA rankings out, Stanford fell three spots from No. 8 to No. 11, based entirely off the play of other teams participating at the ITA National Indoor Championships. However, five Stanford players were ranked in the top 70 individually. While the women say they do not closely follow the rankings, they do pay attention to where they stand.

“It isn’t critical, but it legitimizes us,” said head coach Lele Forood. “That is how I would put it. It’s important for us to know that we’ve done well enough for all those people to be individually ranked.”

Stanford has run through its competition so far and seeks to continue its dominance going into league play. With four shutouts on the season, wins have been commanding against an early schedule that includes four ranked teams.

“It’s been going really well,” said junior Carolyn McVeigh. “We’ve played a lot of top schools, not top 10, but our trip to Texas was really key to realize how good we are as a team and to finally put all our hard work in practice into match play.”

Hawaii has had a totally different season. Its one win came over Cal State Fullerton 6-1, but the Rainbow Wahine suffered several heartbreaking losses. These include three losses by the score of 4-3 against Nevada, Loyola Marymount and San Diego State. The Hawaii women could easily be sitting on a winning record if those matches had gone the other way.

“They probably won’t be as tough of a match as the schools this weekend, but every day is a different day,” McVeigh said. “Schools will bring their best against us simply because we’re Stanford, and they can do that.”

Stanford and Hawaii met in a fall exhibition that helped both teams define their starting lineup. The Cardinal prevailed 5-2, sweeping the doubles before losing at the No. 3 and No. 6 singles spots. Several major lineup changes have occurred since then. Freshmen Mallory Burdette and Stacey Tan have solidified their hold on the No. 2 doubles spot, and the two switch off at the No. 3 and No. 4 singles spots, but have played nowhere else since then. McVeigh, absent from the exhibition, has returned to the lineup after a bout of tonsillitis to play both singles and doubles.

“I’m all better,” she said. “It was only five or six days, so it could have been worse. I got the full practice in [Monday], hit a bit over the weekend on the ball machines, and it was nice being back out there on the court.”

The freshmen have had a major impact on the team since their entrance into the starting lineup. Mallory Burdette, ranked 24th in the nation in the most recent polls, has amassed a 17-3 record in total and a 5-1 dual match record. Her one loss came in a 10-point tiebreaker in the third set against TCU’s Katariina Tuohimaa 5-7, 7-6 (4), 10-5. At this pace, she stands to equal or surpass her sister Lindsay Burdette — senior captain this year — in overall record for her freshman year. Unfortunately, neither will likely be able to match eldest sister Erin’s 43-7 freshman record from 2001-02.

“Mallory’s been phenomenal so far,” Forood said. “She’s done really well, [she’s] an extremely spirited competitor. If Mallory flirts with Erin’s record . . . that would be a phenomenal season.”

Fellow freshman Tan debuted on the ITA rankings at No. 54 and is right behind Mallory at a total record of 15-4 total, 5-2 in dual play. The two have combined for a ranking of No. 37 in doubles and a 13-3 record overall — 5-1 in dual play.

All this success is vital toward building momentum going into this weekend’s matches against UCLA and USC. While they don’t count for conference standings, the matches will be a significant indicator of where the team is at this point in the season.

“We’re gonna have fun,” Forood said. “We look forward to getting some conference matches in. Even though they’re the non-counters, it’s always good to play the L.A. schools.”

Stanford plays Hawaii at home today at 1:30 p.m., and then will play at UCLA on Friday and USC on Saturday.