The No. 30 Oregon women’s tennis kicked off its Pac-12 Championship play with its second consecutive 4-0 win over Utah, having defeated the Utes April 15, in the regular season finale.
Although Utah was the No. 10 seed, the Ducks must be pleased with the repeated dominant results over the Pac-12 foe.
Today started out very similar to their previous match, as No. 88 Rifanty Kahfiani and Alyssa Tobita defeated Taylor Calton and Whitney Turley again 6-3. The only difference in the one-sided doubles match was that the freshman duo of Julia Lilien and Paiton Wagner won their match 6-3 over Brianna Chisholm and Victoria Robertson 6-3 instead of the No. 69 pair of Shweta Sangwan and Julia Eshet.
Singles play remained an almost-replica of the Senior Day victory. Daniela Nasser improved on her previous result over Calton, winning 6-1, 6-2 and Wagner defeated Robertson for the second time on the day, this time in singles play, 6-4, 6-3.
Eshet moved up to the No. 5 position this time around and clinched the match for her second win over Utah this season, downing Turley 6-2, 6-4.
This result should be a much-needed confidence booster as the Ducks remain in Ojai, California, to take on the No. 2 seed UCLA Bruins for the second round of the tournament. Although the Ducks fell 4-0 to the Bruins on March 18, the Ducks haven’t dropped a point since the April 8 loss to Stanford three matches ago.
Thursday’s match against No. 13 UCLA will start at 2 p.m. with the Ducks looking to pull off their second victory over UCLA in program history.
Follow Maverick Pallack on Twitter @mavpallack