Two NCAA Tourney Tennis Matches Today
Both the Men’s and Women’s Wolverine Tennis teams are in action today in their respective second round NCAA tournament matchups.
The women are in doubles play right now, leading two games and trailing in the third, as they take on the Kentucky Wildcats at home in Ann Arbor. The Wolverines are the 16th seed (the last seeded team and regional host), and demolished UIC yesterday in their first round matchup. Kentucky beat DePaul. Decent crowd here on a warm day at the Michigan Varsity Tennis Center. The winner will likely earn a Sweet 16 matchup with Georgia, the top team in the nation.
The men are unseeded, and face 6 seed Baylor in Waco at 7ET. The men beat Dartmouth yesterday.
Go Blue!
Wolverines take an extremely exciting doubles point. Jones and Patiuk win 6-3 in 3 doubles, while Fahey and Minor rally back from a 5-2 deficit to win 7-5 at the 1s. 2s Pairone and Craciun have their match abandoned in tiebreakers.
Wolverines lead 1-0, now six singles matches will be played, each worth 1 point, so Michigan needs 3/6 to win the match and advance.
Michigan has won 5/6 first sets, with the sixth standing at 5-4 Kentucky. Meanwhile Brienne Minor has gotten out to a 4-1 lead in her second set, after winning the first 6-0.
Exciting but decisive Michigan win. Fahey wins 6-2, 6-2 for her 20th consecutive singles victory. Minor ran out to a big lead before a UK rally made it 5-5 in the second set. Minor won the next game before a UK double fault gave her the match at 6-0, 7-5. Minutes later Perione finished off a 6-0 second set to take the match for the Wolverines. Even if Minor had ended up losing its very likely Michigan would have won 4-1. Great day for Michigan, who almost certainly head down to Georgia.
Men play at 7, I will not be in a position to provide updates. Go Blue!!
Excellent! Thanks for the updates! Go Blue!!
M tennis starts the match winning the doubles point from #6 Baylor--tiebreak wins at #2 and #3 doubles to overcome a loss at #1.
Now Michigan needs 3 of the 6 singles matches to advance. Winner advances to the "super-regional" against the #11 UCLA v Oklahoma State winner.
Singles don't go so well for the men. #6 Baylor with the 4-1 win over Michigan, whose season will end with a top-32 finish in the NCAAs.
As noted above, the women advance to the super-regionals (round of 16), playing the winner of tomorrow's match between #1 Georgia and Wake Forest. If the Deacons can pull off the upset, Michigan will host them next weekend. More likely, they will be playing at Georgia instead.
They have a kid Styler coming in who should really push the team up the ladder. Now that being said, they really need a guy like Forman to break thru. They are getting closer.
The womens team is going to take a step back next year but this team is pretty rock solid and are playing well.