Michigan Women Beat No. 2 Duke; Dabrowski, DeVoest Take BNP Paribas Qualifying Wild Cards; Fratangelo into Harlingen Futures Final

The second-ranked Duke women fell to No. 13 Michigan Friday night in Ann Arbor, with the Wolverines taking a 3-0 lead, then holding off the Blue Devils surge to post a 4-3 victory. According to the Michigan athletic website mgoblue.com, Duke is the highest ranked opponent Michigan has ever beaten.

The Wolverines took the doubles point easily, getting wins at No. 1 and No. 2, then got quick singles wins from Emina Bektas over Hanna Mar at No. 1 and Amy Zhu over Annie Mulholland at No. 5.  Duke made it 3-2 with Mary Clayton's three-set win over Sarah Lee at No. 3 and Marianne Jodoin's two-set win over Mimi Nguyen at 6. That left it up to courts 2 and 4, which were both in third sets.  Ronit Yurovsky led Duke's Ester Goldfeld 5-1 in the third set, but Goldfeld won four straight games before the Michigan freshman finally closed out a 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 win. By that time, Duke's Monica Turewicz at No. 4 had beaten Brooke Bolender  4-6, 7-6(4), 6-3, making the final score 4-3 Michigan. Other women's Top 10 scores of interest in the past few days saw No. 3 UCLA defeating Pepperdine 4-3, with the Waves' unranked Lorraine Guillermo getting a 6-4, 6-2 win over No. 2 Robin Anderson, but the Bruins using their depth to prevail.  The No. 26 Stanford women defeated No. 9 Cal today in Palo Alto 6-1, with the Bears top player Zsofie Susanyi absent.

In Top 25 men's play, No. 13 Ole Miss needed a third-set tiebreaker at No. 4 singles to beat No. 31 Alabama 4-3, with Stefan Lindmark defeating Phillipe Tsangarides 6-3, 5-7, 7-6(10) to secure the 4-3 win for the Rebels.  No. 9 Georgia opened its SEC season with a 4-1 win over No. 8 Tennessee in Athens Friday, despite again playing without their top player KU Singh.  No. 44 Florida State defeated No. 15 Texas 5-2 in Tallahassee, the Seminoles first win ever over the Longhorns.

Qualifying begins Monday at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, and today the finals of the pre-qualifying tournament were played. Gabriela Dabrowski(3) of Canada, the 2009 Orange Bowl champion, defeated Sachia Vickery(4) 6-2, 7-6(5) to earn the qualifying wild card, and is often the case, the tournament also gave Vickery a qualifying wild card.  Samantha Crawford, who lost to Dabrowski in the semifinals, also was given a qualifying wild card, according to the tournament's twitter account.

The men's pre-qualifying tournament was won by South Africa's Rik de Voest, who defeated former UCLA Bruin Haythem Abid, last year's winner (correction: Dennis Novikov won, Abid was a finalist last year too), in today's final. Abid was also given a qualifying wild card, as was Bobby Reynolds. When David Nalbandian moved into the main draw, it freed up a wild card, which was given to Jack Sock, who is in the Delray Beach doubles final Sunday with James Blake. Rhyne Williams didn't need his qualifying wild card, so that also became available at the last minute. The men's qualifying begins Tuesday.

At the $15,000 Futures event this week in Harlingen, Texas, 2011 French Open boys champion Bjorn Fratangelo reached his third Futures final of the year, defeating 17-year-old qualifier Yoshihito Nishioka of Japan 6-2, 6-4.  Fratangelo, who is unseeded this week, has not dropped more than four games in any set. His opponent in the final, 2011 ITF World Junior champion Jiri Vesely of the Czech Republic, has needed three sets to advance the past two days. The No. 2 seed, who has won two Futures titles this year and eight total, defeated Fratangelo 6-4, 6-2 in the quarterfinals of last week's Futures in Brownsville.