Women’s tennis ends regular season with loss to USC
By Daniel Khayat
April 20, 2009 12:01 a.m.
The No. 10 UCLA women’s tennis team ended the regular season on a sour note Friday, falling 5-2 to No. 9 USC. The loss snaps a four-match winning streak for the Bruins and marks their first loss to the Trojans in six meetings between the crosstown rivals.
One positive thing the Bruins (17-6, 5-3 Pac-10) can take from the match is that the loss had a minimal effect on their seed in the conference.
The Pac-10 standings were all but set in stone prior to Friday’s encounter at USC, with the Trojans (20-2, 8-0) wrapping up their first ever conference title by going undefeated in Pac-10 play.
UCLA finished fourth, behind the Women of Troy, No. 8 California (17-4, 7-1) and No. 12 Stanford (17-4, 6-2), all teams that bested the Bruins in head-to-head meetings.
However, UCLA coach Stella Sampras Webster would have liked to see another tally in the win column.
“It’s always disappointing to lose, for one,” Sampras Webster said. “And to lose to USC, our rival, it’s double that. It didn’t really matter about the Pac-10 standings. We just wanted to go into USC and win our last match of the season, so it was extremely disappointing to go there and not get a victory.”
The Bruins edged out the Trojans back on March 5 in a tight 4-3 contest, but couldn’t recapture the magic of that performance on Friday, losing the doubles point and the first singles match at Court 4 to fall behind 2-0 early. In the teams’ first clash, it was the Bruins who took a quick 2-0 lead before going on to win 4-3.
In fact, March 5 was the last time USC lost to anybody. The Trojans have now rattled off 12 straight victories since the loss to UCLA.
The Bruins were unable to capitalize on opportunities Friday and lost three of the four singles matches that went to three sets. Sophomore Maya Johansson and freshman Carling Seguso weren’t able to come out on top on Courts No. 3 and 6, respectively, and both lost in three sets.
Sophomore Andrea Remynse was pushed to a third-set tiebreaker by USC senior Amanda Fink on Court No. 2 after winning the first set.
Fink managed to win the match after an 18-game third-set marathon that went 4-6, 7-5, 10-8, capping off a disappointing outing for the Bruins.
“Not winning that doubles point definitely made it tougher for us to win that match, but even (without the point), we had opportunities to win,” Sampras Webster said. “Even in singles, the matches were extremely close and could have gone either way and (given us) the chance to beat ‘SC, but unfortunately we couldn’t get those wins, and that made the difference.”
Remynse and junior Yasmin Schnack were the only Bruins to win their doubles match on Friday, when they got the better of USC’s team of Fink and junior Gabriela Niculescu on Court No. 1.
Schnack took care of business at the No. 1 position in singles as well, disposing of sophomore Maria Sanchez, 7-6, 6-2. Schnack, after struggling briefly in late March and early April, has regained her form and finished the regular season with a singles record of 17-4.
Senior Ashley Joelson has been on something of a hot streak lately as well, winning her last four singles matches, including her 6-3, 4-6, 6-2 victory over USC freshman Alison Ramos at the No. 5 position Friday.
“We want to keep them going,” Sampras Webster said of Schnack and Joelson. “It’s obvious they’re feeling very confident and playing extremely well and winning a lot of matches for us. We want to keep them in that type of mentality, going into every match believing that they can win. It’s a matter of getting everyone else on board and working extremely hard in the next few weeks to get ready for the postseason.”
