Daria Panova’s quest for a fourth consecutive Pacific-10 Conference individual tennis title was cut short as the junior was upset in the quarterfinals of the Pac-10 outdoor individual championships Friday by 77th-ranked Anca Anastasiu, 4-6, 6-0, 6-3.
Oregon’s 10th-ranked Panova started strong but couldn’t hold serve in the second set, finally falling in the third set against the USC left-hander from South Africa.
The loss dropped Panova’s record to 31-12 this season, leaving her one win short of her own Oregon single-season victory record of 32 set last year. Panova’s No. 10 ranking will still assure her a spot in the NCAA individual championships in Athens, Ga., May 20-29.
In doubles play, both Oregon duos were defeated in the first round. Panova was once again upset, and USC’s Anastasiu again had a hand in it. The 50th-ranked pair of Panova and Courtney Nagle was eliminated by the Trojan duo of Anastasiu and Dianne Matias, 8-6.
The other Oregon doubles team of Anna Leksinska and Dominika Dieskova was dominated by the 13th-ranked duo of Raquel Kops-Jones and Jieun Jacobs of California, 8-2.
Next up for the Ducks women’s tennis team is the NCAA team tournament
selection on May 6. With Oregon posting a 16-8 overall record and being ranked 30th in the country, the Ducks are in a good position to receive an NCAA bid.

Kost defeated in quarterfinals
Oregon junior Manuel Kost couldn’t carry his winning ways into the quarterfinals, as he was defeated Friday in the Pac-10 outdoor individual championships by USC’s Adriano Biasella, 6-3, 6-4.
“Biasella has a lot of confidence and he got some rhythm going in his game and Manu wasn’t able to break it,”
Oregon head coach Chris Russell said.
Kost, who became the first men’s player from Oregon to participate in the NCAA tournament in three years, looks to be on the bubble this year, according to Russell. With an 18-10 record and a No. 71 ranking in the country, he will have to wait for the men’s singles NCAA selection on May 7 to see if he will participate in the tournament.
Like the women, two of the Oregon men’s doubles teams were defeated in the first round of the tournament. The Oregon duo of Sven Swinnen and Arron Spencer, ranked 40th in the
country, lost to the Stanford pair of K.C. Corkery and James Pade, 8-5.
“They were down a break early and it is tough to battle back against a team that knows how to win when they’re up,” Russell said of the match.
In another doubles match, Kost and Markus Schiller couldn’t hold leads in the match or the tie-breaker and lost to UCLA’s team of Philipp Gruendler and Luben Pampoulov, 9-8. Kost and Schiller were up 4-1 in the tie-break but, according to Russell, an easy volley gone bad started a chain reaction that ended in Oregon’s demise.
“That is a match we should have won,” Russell said. “We must be more disciplined when we have the lead so we can finish out matches.”
Junior Thomas Bieri and senior Chris King lost in the semifinals Saturday, 8-4. The duo lost to Stanford’s Phil Sheng and James Wan.
Now the men’s team is awaiting the May 6 announcement of the 64-team NCAA tournament. The Ducks are 9-10 this season and ranked 52nd in the nation, and Russell believes they still have a chance to make the field.
“We’re hoping to get into the team tournament because that is our main goal and we’re close,” Russell said.