CORAL GABLES, Fla. – No. 22 Texas A&M pulled off a huge 4-2 victory against 12th-ranked Miami in the championship match of the ITA Kick-Off Weekend today at the Neil Schiff Tennis Center to advance to the 16-team ITA Division I National Team Indoor Championship, to be held next month at Yale.
“It was an incredible effort today by the Aggies today,” A&M second-year head coach Mark Weaver said. “Miami had been to the National Indoors for 12 years in a row, so to come here on their home courts and with the difficult conditions, the humidity, and we were battling some cramps there at the end but showed incredible toughness. That was one of the challenges I gave them in the pre-match speech is to show how tough we can be today. I told them we were going to be faced with some adversity, difficult matches, difficult conditions, and I don’t think there could have been a tougher, grittier effort from the group.
“Truly I couldn’t me more proud of the girls. There were a ton of big points, and I felt like we rose to the occasion definitely in the majority of those points. Overall, especially this early in the year, to have the team prepared and playing this well early on definitely shows that we are a team to contend with this year.”
Texas A&M improved to 4-0 as it picked up its highest ranked win since defeating then No. 8 South Carolina, 6-1, on March 31, 2016, in Columbia, South Carolina. Miami, the No. 1 seed in the four-team pod, drops to 1-1.
Texas A&M got off to a good start by winning two of the three doubles matches to take a 1-0 lead. Aggies Domenica Gonzalez and Eva Paalma finished off Sinead Lohan and Ana Madcur, 6-2, at the No. 2 line, but Miami quickly evened the race for the crucial point as Silvia Fuentes and Estela Perez-Somarriba topped A&M’s Tina Bokhua and Stefania Hristov by the identical score at No. 3.
The doubles point came down to the No. 1 line, where 17th-ranked Rutuja Bhosale and Rachel Pierson broke away from a 3-3 tie, winning three consecutive games to close out the 6-3 victory, giving the Maroon and White a 1-0 lead heading into singles.
The Hurricanes quickly evened the score at the start of singles as A&M’s Saska Gavrilovska retired after she dropped her first set, 6-0, to 70th-ranked Perez-Somarriba at the No. 4 line, but the Aggies would go on to win three first sets, which would prove to be crucial.
Bhosale returned the lead to A&M. After winning four consecutive games to close out a 7-5 first set win against 69th-ranked Epstein at the No. 2 line, Bhosale jumped out to 3-0 lead in the second set en route to a 7-5, 6-2 victory that put the Aggies up, 2-1.
In a near bang-bang finish, Miami’s sixth-ranked Lohan quickly evened the score once again, ending Pierson’s six-match winning streak with a 6-4, 6-1 victory at the No. 1 line.
A&M’s Bokhua gave the Aggies the lead for good and posted her sixth consecutive victory. Bokhua had pulled away from a 4-4 tie to win the first set, 6-4, against Paterova at No. 3. Bokhua, A&M’s highest ranked singles player at No. 57, then jumped out to a 5-1 second-set lead before Paterova charged back to even the set at 5-5. Bokhua then won the next two games to win, 7-5, giving A&M a 3-2 lead.
Although Bokhua had put the Aggies ahead, Miami was building momentum on the remaining two courts. When Bokhua finished, Madcur was on her way to splitting sets at No. 5, where Olivares had won the first set, 6-2, but Madcur had won back-to-back games and held a 5-3 second-set lead. On the adjoining court, Hristov had dropped her first set, 7-5, to Fuentes at the No. 6 line, and Fuentes had built 4-2 second-set lead.
Madcur went on to win the second set against Olivares, 6-3, to force a third set, while Hristov rallied, winning five consecutive games to win, 7-5, and force a third set at No. 6.
Olivares would win the first three games of the third set against Madcur, but Madcur would answer with a three-game run to even the final set, 3-3.
Meanwhile, Fuentes had jumped out to a 3-0 lead against Hristov in the final set. Hristov had gotten within 3-2 before Olivares completed a momentous three-game run to close out a 6-3 third-set victory against Madcur to win the match and set off a celebration by the Aggies.
“It was a huge win,” Weaver said. “Not many teams come into Miami and beat them. It is a team that had advanced to the National Indoor Championship 12 years in a row and have reached the NCAA Sweet each of the last 11 years, so they are always in or near the top 10 and they are even tougher playing at home. It’s a very, very big win for the Aggies. If we can keep moving forward in the right direction, there is a lot more great tennis to come this season.”
The Aggies return to action Thursday, Feb. 2, as they play host to Princeton. The first-ever meeting between the two programs will begin at 3 p.m. at the George P. Mitchell Tennis Center.
Visit 12thMan.com for more information on Texas A&M women’s tennis. Aggie fans also can keep up to date with the A&M women’s tennis team on Twitter by following @AggieWTEN or on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/pages/Aggie-Womens-Tennis/143874782434654
#22 Texas A&M 4, #12 Miami 2
ITA Kick-Off Weekend, Championship Match
Neil Schiff Tennis Center
Coral Gables, Florida
Singles
1. #6 Sinead Lohan (UM) def. #85 Rachel Pierson (A&M), 6-4, 6-1
2. Rutuja Bhosale (A&M) def. #69 Maci Epstein (UM), 7-5, 6-2
3. #57 Tina Bokhua (A&M) def. Dominika Paterova (UM), 6-4, 7-5
4. Estela Perez-Somarriba (UM) def. Saska Gavrilovska (A&M), 6-0 retired
5. Macarena Olivares (A&M) def. Ana Madcur (UM), 6-2, 3-6, 6-3
6. Stefania Hristov (A&M) vs. Silvia Fuentes (UM), 5-7, 7-5, 2-3 unfinished
Doubles
1. (#17) Bhosale/Pierson (A&M) def. Epstein/Paterova (UM), 6-3
2. Domenica Gonzalez/Eva Paalma (A&M) def. Lohan/Madcur (UM), 6-2
3. Fuentes/Perez-Somarriba (UM) def. Bokhua/Hristov (A&M), 6-2
Match Notes:
Miami 1-1; National ranking #12
Texas A&M 4-0; National ranking #22
Order of finish: Doubles (2, 3, 1); Singles (4, 2, 1, 3, 5)
Story courtesy of Texas A&M Athletics