Twenty-one straight conference titles, 101 consecutive regular season home dual matches and 127 contests played on the Farm.

In nearly a full decade, the No. 5 Stanford women’s tennis team has been infallible at home.

With a surprising four-loss season and No. 8 Southern California and No. 9 UCLA coming to town, these streaks certainly seem in jeopardy, though that doesn’t seem to bother the Cardinal.

“I certainly hope nobody’s focused on that,” head coach Lele Forood said. “I can’t answer for everybody else, but that has nothing to do with what we’re talking or thinking about. We just want to get a little more consistent with our level of play and we’ve had some really good matches lately.”

“Right now we’re focused on reaching a good level of play consistently and we’re practicing very well this week so I have a good feeling about this,” Forood added.

If it’s any consolation, all four losses have come on the road, most of them 4-3 decisions. Additionally, five of their last six matches are on the Farm.

“There’s a comfort level to playing at home clearly, but mostly we’re very familiar with the conditions at home and the courts we play on,” Forood said. “We’ve had some different conditions — Arizona is very different to play in. And so you just play the elements when you go on the road and tennis you play outdoors, which can affect an awful lot.”

Earlier this season, Stanford left its Southern California roadtrip with a split against the two schools.

Fortunately for the Card, the matches did not count toward the Pac-10 standings.

On Friday, the Women of Troy will try to overthrow the perennial Pac-10 leaders.

USC will attempt to avenge a close 4-3 loss to the Cardinal women back in early March. Since then, USC has gone 6-1, vaulting ahead of UCLA in the ITA rankings.

The next day, the Bruins come into town looking for a Cardinal sweep on the year. UCLA has won the last two meetings, including a 4-2 victory over the Card in the national semifinal last May.

“Every time, especially if you’re losing 4-3, the immediate thing to work on is the doubles,” Forood said. “We lost the doubles point at UCLA, so that’s the first thing any team will spend a lot of time on. That’s certainly one area, and we want to be more consistent — we have more players who can win their singles matches and we just need to do it on the same day.”

Though consistency as a whole has been difficult to find, freshman Hilary Barte has thrived at the No. 1 spot.

Since being thrust into the spotlight, Barte has responded incredibly well with an 11-match win streak. She is now 19-5 overall, 10-1 against Pac-10 opponents and 12-3 against nationally-ranked opponents.

“Hilary obviously has done quite well,” Forood said. “We’ve had number ones who were freshmen who have had very good runs — she’s the third one in this decade so far after Marissa Irvin and Amber Liu. It’s certainly been done before but she’s done a tremendous job on focusing on her matches and bringing what she can [to] each and every one of her matches.”

As a testament to the strength of the conference, the top-four teams are ranked all within the top-10 programs in the nation.

“I think they’re both very good teams, but it’s a tough Pac-10,” Forood said of USC and UCLA. “There have been a lot of teams beating each other so far. I think the conference will show up very big at the NCAA tournament as usual.”

With all of the streaks on the line, perhaps the numbers aren’t as important any more for Stanford.

“It’s not a stated goal of ours right now to win a conference title, though it’s nice to do so,” Forood said. “But it’s not something we’re looking at right now. The most critical thing is playing well as a group and things will take care of themselves if we do that.”

And if things fall into place for the Card, sacrificing a conference title is indeed a small price to pay.