NCAA Women's Tennis Championships: UCLA, Stanford upset top-5 seeds
Both Pac-12 teams in the NCAA Women's Tennis Championships round of 16 knocked off top-seeded opponents on Thursday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina to advance to Saturday's quarterfinals. See how the Cardinal and Bruins punched their tickets to the tournament's final eight teams.
[Related: 2018 NCAA Women's Tennis Championships bracket (NCAA.com)]
Stanford 4, North Carolina 1
When it comes to the NCAA postseason, the Cardinal seems to flourish as underdogs. Despite matching up against No. 2 seed North Carolina and dropping the double points to begin play, Stanford rallied to knock off the Tar Heels 4-1 Thursday morning.
Things got off to a slow start with UNC's duo of Marika Akkerman/Makenna Jones clinching the doubles point over Melissa Lord/Janice Shin in a hard-fought 7-5 match. Heading to singles in the hole 1-0, Lord struck back and evened things up with a 6-4, 6-1 win over 26th-ranked Alle Sanford. Stanford's Emma Higuchi then downed Chloe Ouellet-Pizer, 6-1, 6-4.
With their first overall lead of the match, the Stanford women ensured the momentum didn't swing back to the Tar Heels with Emily Arbuthnott's 6-3, 6-1 victory against Alexa Graham. Janice Shin then finished things off for the second time in as many matches with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Jessie Aney.
Stanford has now won 17 of its last 20 matches in the NCAA Championships when seeded lower than its opponent. The Cardinal will now face No. 7 seed Georgia on Saturday, May 19 at 9 a.m. PT.
UCLA 4, Ole Miss 1
Following the lead of their fellow Pac-12ers, the Bruins closed out fifth-seeded Ole Miss 4-1 to secure a national quarterfinals berth for the women from Westwood. UCLA didn't waste any time, collecting the doubles point with a 6-4 victory by Gabby Andrews/Ayan Broomfield on court 2 over the Rebels' pair of Tea Jandric/Sabina Machalova.
Picking up right where she left off with doubles, Broomfield extended the Bruins' lead to 2-0 with a 6-2, 6-0 win over Mississippi's Natalie Suk on court 5. Jada Hart then handed Machalova her second loss of the match, 6-2, 6-2, on court 2.
But the No. 5 seed Rebs weren't quite done yet. Anna Vrbenska closed out UCLA's Abi Altick 3-6, 6-4, 6-2. But Alaina Miller put a stop to any Ole Miss comeback thoughts with a 6-7, 6-4, 6-3 clincher on court 6 over Alexa Bortles.
Miller does it! Laini holds and the Bruins are into the #NCAATennis quarterfinals!!! pic.twitter.com/BT3IuF3rdE
— UCLA Women's Tennis (@uclawtennis) May 18, 2018
The Bruins move on to Saturday, where they will play No. 4 seed Georgia Tech at 1 p.m. PT.