Arkansas Takes Out No. 2 Seed Georgia; UCLA Shuts Out USC in NCAA Women's Round of 16 Play
©Colette Lewis 2008--
Tulsa, OK--
Arkansas had already taken down No. 15 seed North Carolina in the regional finals last Saturday. Today the 17-32 seed bumped off No. 2 Georgia 4-2, earning their second victory of the season over their SEC rivals.
Georgia lost the doubles point and then the first set in three matches, so faced an uphill climb during the unseasonably cool late afternoon. When the country's top player, Arkansas's Aurelija Miseviciute, handled Yvette Hyndman at No. 1 by a 6-2, 7-6 (1) score, it was 2-0 Arkansas and Delia Damaschin soon made it 3-0 at No. 6. Georgia managed to take matches at No. 4 and No. 5 to close the gap, but Monika Dancevic fell behind early in the third in her match with Arkansas's Anouk Tigu, and the January freshman ended up putting the Lady Razorbacks in the quarterfinals with a 6-1, 4-6, 6-1 victory at No. 3.
Arkansas avenged their 4-3 loss to Georgia in the SEC tournament in Athens and will have an opportunity to get even with UCLA in the quarterfinals. The Bruins, who defeated Arkansas 4-3 at the Team Indoor in February, handled PAC-10 rival Southern Cal 4-0.
An easy 6-1, 6-1 win by a now healthy Yasmin Schnack at No. 3 set the tone, and freshman Andrea Remynse's straight set win at No. 4 gave UCLA a 3-0 lead. Moments later, Alex McGoodwin clinched it for the Bruins with a 6-4, 7-5 win over Leyla Entekhabi at No. 6.
For complete scores, see the University of Tulsa website.
6 comments:
Are some of these courts indoors? I'm watching Florida play Vandy and the Boonstra-Ullery match looks like it's being played indoors. The others all look outdoors.
Yes, due to a lighting issue on their court, it was moved inside.
Thanks. I wondered why that match took so long to begin. Of course, didn't take the freshman long to finish off. Florida's singles lineup is really young with 3 sophomores, 2 freshmen and a senior. Surprised Roland isn't playing Frangulyan, she's unbeaten on the year, but it's tough to break the lineup. Should be a good match on Saturday with Tech. Hard to believe these teams have never met. Doubles point will be key and Florida hasn't lost a doubles point all year.
I've got to ask, is Marrit Boonstra the strongest (and possibly the most ridiculously overqualified) #5 in the entire NCAA competition? She's been ranked up to 550 in the WTA ranking and has a 3-0 Fed Cup record. Her singles record includes a match tally of 13-2, 32 sets played, 4 sets lost (works out due to unfinished matches), 189 games for and 71 against.
She reminds me of Alexis Gordon as a freshman for Florida playing #5 singles. Overqualified, probably, but Florida is pretty deep and I don't think she's better than the girls playing ahead of her. In fact, I think 1-7, this team is pretty even in their strength. The bottom of Florida's lineup is it's strength.
Scott,
If you have a look at her ITF results you'll see she's as qualified as Julia Cohen to play at number 1 (Boonstra has won 1 $10,000 event and been runner-up in two others, Cohen has been runner-up in one $25,000) and that is a luxury few teams ever have. Remember, they did lose the even-more-qualified-as-number-one Diana Srebrovic (a two time All-American with a WTA high ranking of 270), and didn't miss a beat.
Hard to say how even the line-up is (Borsanyi and Alexander's results haven't been outstanding) but it does seem as though the Florida way is to stack the bottom deck, lock players in and don't let them move up in the rankings (and out of that slot). I don't know if that's good for the players but it is good for the team. One of the keys to Georgia Tech's win last year was having Amanda McDowell absolutely dominating at no.4. GT was almost guaranteed of a win every match and that 'certainty' does lift the team (and weigh heavily on the opposition).
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