Cal Hosts To Open NCAA Tournament
BERKELEY – The California women's tennis team opens the NCAA Championship tournament on Friday when the Golden Bears host San Jose State, Kentucky and Syracuse in early round action at the Hellman Tennis Complex. In first-round matches on Friday, Kentucky plays Syracuse at 10 a.m., before Cal – the 16th seed in the 64-team field – takes on San Jose State at 1 p.m. Friday's winners face off in the second round on Saturday at 1 p.m. for the right to advance to the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida, for the rest of the postseason.
"We're excited to be one of the 16 sites that the NCAA committee selected to host the first two rounds of the championship," Cal head coach Amanda Augustus said. "It's an important part of our season, and having the opportunity to host at Hellman is great, especially given that our players are finishing up the spring semester academically. We're looking forward to continuing our season in the NCAA Championship."
Fans can follow Friday's and Saturday's matches via the free Hellman live stream and live scores by clicking here. Match updates are also available on Twitter @CalWomensTennis.
The NCAA quarterfinals, semifinals and final will be played from May 16-22 in Orlando. The USTA site will then host the NCAA Singles and Doubles Championships from May 23-28, with the singles and doubles fields slated to be announced on Tuesday, May 4.
Cal enters the NCAA team tournament on a high after defeating top-seeded UCLA, 4-2, in the Pac-12 Championship final on April 26 in San Diego. The Bears, who also bested Stanford, 4-1, in the conference semifinals, bring a 17-6 record into the postseason. During the regular season, Cal posted a 7-3 record playing in one of the most challenging conferences in the nation. Five Pac-12 teams – Cal, fourth-seeded UCLA, Stanford, USC and Arizona State – reached the postseason.
Augustus has produced a 248-82 record (.750 winning percentage) in 13-plus seasons at the helm of her alma mater. A two-time NCAA doubles champion as a Cal player in 1998 and 1999, Augustus led the Bears to the NCAA final in each of her first two years as head coach in 2008 and 2009. She has mentored numerous Cal All-Americans and individual national champions, including 2009 NCAA doubles champs Mari Andersson and Jana Juricova and Juricova again in 2011, when the latter captured the NCAA singles title.
This year's team features a talented collection of Bears including the 49th-ranked Haley Giavara, a sophomore who earned All-America honors last season, senior Julia Rosenqvist, who provided the clutch win against UCLA that clinched the conference title, and Valentina Ivanov, a sophomore who pairs with Giavara at court-one doubles and who plays Fed Cup tennis for New Zealand.
In the most recent NCAA team tournament in 2019, Augustus' team reached the round of 32 and posted a 13-9 overall record. In 2017, the Bears won twice at home to advance to the quarterfinals in Athens, Georgia, where they finished with a 19-6 record.
Cal spent much of the 2015-16 season ranked No. 1, with five-time All-American Maegan Manasse headlining a star-studded cast. The Bears won the first national team title in program history when they claimed the ITA National Team Championship with a 4-3 victory over North Carolina in February 2016. They rolled through their opponents with 4-0 results in each of the first three rounds and then topped a talented Pepperdine team, 4-2, in the quarterfinals. Cal's journey ended with a 4-3 loss in the semifinals against Oklahoma State.
Please stay tuned to CalBears.com throughout the week for more information about the NCAA tournament matches at Hellman.
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