The No. 9 UCLA women’s tennis team narrowly defeated No. 14 Arizona State on Thursday before being edged out by No. 5 Baylor on Saturday. Each match finished with a final score of 4-3.
Despite splitting the weekend’s matches, the inability of the Bruins to capitalize on scoring opportunities hampered the team’s play, thus resulting in the close loss as well as the close win.
The Bruins (13-3, 1-0 Pac-10) left Waco, Texas with a bad taste in their mouths after losing their first match in a month since traveling to Wisconsin to participate in the National Team Indoor Championships.
After winning the doubles point against the Bears (8-4), UCLA faltered at the start of singles play, with sophomore Maya Johansson, freshman Nina Pantic and senior Ashley Joelson all losing in straight sets on courts three, four and five respectively to put the Bruins in a 1-3 hole.
However, junior Yasmin Schnack and freshman Carling Seguso sparked what could have been an impressive comeback win for the Bruins by posting victories at courts one and six, only to see sophomore Andrea Remynse fall 3-6, 6-7 at court two after being up 5-1 in her second set.
Missed opportunities proved to be a theme for the Bruins throughout the week, though they were of a more individual nature against the Sun Devils.
Schnack, the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s No. 19 singles player in the nation, lost her first singles match of the season 3-6, 7-5, 4-6 to Arizona State sophomore Kelcy McKenna, ranked No. 3 by the ITA, after dropping a double game point while up 4-3 in the decisive third set.
“She’s got to learn from this because she had opportunities to win this match,” coach Stella Sampras Webster said. “I think that’s what’s hard to take.”
Even though the Bruins clinched the victory over the Sun Devils (8-3, 3-0) before Schnack could finish her match, she was visibly disappointed by her loss.
“I owed it to my team to fight hard and do everything I could to win, but I wasn’t able to (do it),” Schnack said.
Despite the missed chances in the front courts ““ Remynse and Johansson both lost closely-fought third set tiebreakers ““ the Bruins ran wild over their Arizona State counterparts on the back courts. Pantic, Joelson and Seguso all posted convincing straight-set wins to clinch the victory before UCLA’s top three completed their matches.
“We knew that Arizona State’s top half was strong,” Pantic said, “so we knew from the beginning that we had to win on the back courts. We were ready to go.”
Sampras Webster was thrilled by UCLA’s bottom-half performances.
“Every team has great players at top spots (whose matches) could go either way,” Sampras Webster said, “but to be able to have good depth and know that your players are going to go out and have a great chance to win is huge. It gives us a lot of confidence with this team knowing that we’ve got players who can win at those positions.”