No. 49 University of Oregon (11-8, 4-5 Pac-12) suffered a 4-0 shutout loss to No. 24 University of California, Los Angeles (11-6, 5-4 Pac-12) to kick off Senior Weekend.
Last April, UCLA similarly swept Oregon 4-0. After Friday’s Pac-12 contest, the Ducks have a 1-27 all-time record against the Bruins.
The Bruins brought the California sun with them to Eugene, along with their top-ranking women’s tennis players. Ultimately, Oregon went for every ball but struggled to handle UCLA’s pace, power and shot placement.
First to finish doubles was the bottom court, where Myah Petchey and Karin Young lost 4-6 to Anne-Christine Lutkemeyer and Fangram Tian. Lutkemeyer and Tian, the UCLA freshman duo, picked up their sixth victory of the season. The No. 3 Oregon dual-doubles team is now 4-4 for the season.
No. 77 Sophie Luescher and Uxia Martinez Moral faced No. 6 Kimmi Hance and Elise Wagle. Both doubles teams were coming off of massive wins over ITA’s top-10 ranked doubles teams. Luescher and Martinez Moral upset California Berkeley’s No. 9 nationally ranked doubles team last weekend. On Wednesday, Hance and Wagle upset the No. 1 ranked doubles team in the nation, Savannah Broadus and Janice Tjen of Pepperdine. This past fall, Hance and Wagle won the ITA Southwest Regional Championship doubles title in San Diego against the same No.1 Pepperdine doubles team. The pair’s consistent performance against the nation’s top-ranked dual-doubles teams has contributed to their No. 6 ranking.
In Friday’s matchup, Hance and Wagle shut down the Luescher and Martinez Moral with their simple netplay points and crosscourt winners. The 2-6 win on the top court clinched the doubles point for the Bruins.
The tenacious tandem of Ares Teixido Garcia and JoYee Chan battled against Ava Catanzarite and Sasha Vagramov. The Duck duo played two back on the return to combat the Bruins’ aggressive net play and Australian serving formation. Chan’s groundstroke and volley winners kept the team alive and ahead. The match went unfinished with the Ducks ahead 4-3. Garcia and Chan still hold the team-best 12-1 doubles record this spring season.
Hance, the No. 106 ITA ranked singles player, made quick work of her singles match on Court 2, defeating Garcia 2-6, 1-6. Despite the young Duck fans cheering for Garcia on the outside bleachers, Garcia struggled to hype herself up on the court.
Catanzarite bested Petchey 1-6, 0-6 on Court 3, to bring up the match score 3-1 in favor of UCLA.
On the top court, Luescher and Tian exchanged breaks throughout the first set. Luescher (4-8) kept Tian on her heels, but by the second set, the Bruin’s top singles player got in her groove and began to dominate. The Bruin prevailed in singles play, winning 4-6, 1-6. Tian, hailing from Beijing, China, added another victory to her 14-match singles winning streak and 21-5 season record. This past Wednesday, the Bruin freshman beat former Duck and No. 11 in the nation, Janice Tjen. Tian’s third-set tiebreak win over Tjen clinched the UCLA upset over No. 1 Pepperdine.
“We need to keep competing even when it’s tough. Every match that we play, and every opponent that each individual’s going to face is going to challenge them,” head coach Courtney Nagle said. “Some things are going to go our way and some things are not, but we just have to keep bouncing back.”
In a similar Martinez-Moral fashion, she battled for every ball. The Spanish senior moved Wagle around the court, and she forced Wagle to make errors by drawing her to the net. The Duck finally closed out of the first set 6-4, after having a 5-2 lead. Wagle changed up her style of play in the second set and managed to get to the net before Martinez Moral had the opportunity to hit a lethal drop shot. The match was called while the players were tightly tied 3-3 in the second.
Chan returned to No. 6 singles after taking two matches off due to injury. The Oregon freshman split sets with Lutkemeyer and was on serve in the third-set tiebreak when the match went unfinished. On Court 5, Young was down 4-6, 2-5 to Vagramov, when the Bruins secured their road victory.
Oregon looks to win its third ranked win of the season and break the team’s four-game losing streak.
“It’s a big weekend for us. It’s obviously the last weekend that these seniors get to compete at home, so we are going to rally around our seniors and really focus on them. We will try to give the seniors the best experience for Sunday,” Coach Nagle said.
Oregon hosts the University of Southern California for its last home match of the season and concluded Pac-12 conference play this Sunday, April 17, at 11 a.m. Prior to the first serve of Sunday’s match against USC, five Oregon seniors will be honored at the Student Tennis Center as part of Senior Day festivities.
