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Texas Tech
No. 22 Women's Tennis falls in home Big 12 opener to No. 9 Texas Tech, 4-2
03.24.2017 | Women's Tennis
Longhorns wrap Big 12 home stand on Sunday against TCU.
AUSTIN, Texas – No. 9 Texas Tech (15-3, 3-0 Big 12) won the doubles point and four singles decisions in a 4-2 victory over No. 22 Texas (7-6, 1-2 Big 12) Friday at Weller Tennis Center.
Texas started promisingly in doubles play, with freshmen Petra Granic and Bianca Turati defeating the 36th-ranked Sarah Dvorak and Sabrina Federici's 6-1. But, the Lady Raiders claimed the two remaining courts to secure the doubles point.
Texas pushed back at the start of singles play to win the first set in five out of six matches. At second singles, No. 98-ranked Neda Koprcina recorded the first Texas point with a 6-3, 7-5 upset of 56th-ranked Felicity Maltby.
Texas Tech claimed the following two points and extended its lead to 3-1 before Texas' Anna Turati added a 6-4, 6-4 win over Sarah Dvorak at fourth singles. However, the Lady Raiders closed out a 4-2 win with a three-set win at sixth singles.
Texas closes the weekend on Sunday against TCU. First serve is set for noon CT at the Whitaker Tennis Courts.
POST-MATCH COMMENTS
TEXAS HEAD COACH HOWARD JOFFE
There's no question, this was a match that, even though they're a top-10 team, I feel got away from us. I did get the sense that our group weakened just a little bit after about an hour and a half into the singles matches. In that respect, it was disappointing. The other way to look at it is that we're playing dead even with a top-10 team and it doesn't take much imagination for this match to go our way, even right until the very end over here. I was very proud of the ladies and we obviously need to keep competing day to day. We've got matches each weekend but the short term goal here in the next four weeks is just to get a little bit stronger physically and mentally because we've played the top-two teams in our league and we're right there. That's the challenge for us here in the next month.
All the teams in the conference are very good and so the next month, we obviously need to get stronger and better, but while we're doing it we definitely need to be ready to go because we're going to be faced with a very strong TCU team come Sunday. So, a lot of tennis still to play here in the conference.
Players Mentioned
