Women's Tennis | April 25
TOLEDO, Ohio – In its first appearance in the Mid-American Conference Championship match in school history, the Northern Illinois University Huskies engaged in a see-saw battle with the Buffalo Bulls before falling 4-1 Friday at the UT Varsity Tennis Courts.
The loss could not take away from a historic season by NIU as the team broke a 40-year-old school record for dual match wins with 22 and claimed the MAC West Division crown, and the No. 2 seed in the MAC Tournament, for the first time.
"It's been an amazing season," said NIU head coach
Eric Burns. "Obviously we wanted to win today, but we left everything out there and Buffalo played a good match. What a jump our program made this year. This team took it to another level. Future teams will see the success we have had here [this season], and will build off of it. It was a really important step for us to take this year to get to this championship."
The Huskies' No. 2 doubles team of
Isabella Righi and
Lucia Yecora got NIU's day off to a strong start with a 6-0 win. After a 6-3 Buffalo win at No. 3 doubles, the point came down to a tiebreaker on court one for the second time in as many days. The Huskies'
Maria Dzemeshkevich and
Nataly Ninova built a lead in the tiebreaker, but Buffalo's duo of Esmee Andresen and Maria Glowacka came back to score five straight points to win the tiebreaker, 8-6, and claim the doubles point for the Bulls.
"The doubles was a heartbreaker for us," Burns said. "We should have had that point. It put us in a hole. They're a team that you've got to win the doubles point because that's typically where they're a little bit weaker and their singles are typically stronger. Credit to our girls for hanging around in the singles, but as soon as we lost the doubles point, we knew it was going to be an uphill battle to come back and get this match."
Ninova and Dzemeshkevich came back from the doubles loss to win their first sets at No. 4 and No. 1 singles, respectively, but Buffalo claimed the opening sets on the other four courts. Ninova quickly closed out her opponent, 6-2, 6-2, to put the Huskies' point on the board – and extend her school record to 32 wins on the year - just minutes after UB earned its second point with a straight set win at No. 6 singles.
Yecora forced a third set at No. 3 singles after dropping the first set in a tiebreaker. The Bulls' Jagmeet Kaur gave UB a 3-1 lead with a 6-4, 6-4 win at No. 2 singles and Andresen won the second set on court one to force that match to a third set.
With three matches still ongoing, Buffalo's Liv Roestel ended the Huskies' comeback hopes as she earned a 6-4, 7-5 win at No. 5 singles to clinch the Bulls' victory and championship.
NIU's Ninova and Yecora, who both earned second team All-MAC honors earlier this week, were named to the MAC All-Tournament Team.
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