It was an eye-opening weekend for No. 71 WVU Tennis, as the Mountaineers slowly discover where they sit among their Big 12 opponents.
WVU’s record moved to 2-5 in-conference and 13-6 overall after a 6-1 win over Houston on Friday and a 5-2 loss to UCF on Sunday. The Mountaineers are ninth in the Big 12 standings and tenth among Big 12 teams in the ITA’s top 75 rankings.
The Mountaineers are now 0-5 against currently-ranked opponents, with losses to No. 52 TCU, No. 30 Baylor, No. 7 Texas, No. 20 Oklahoma, and No. 62 UCF. The Knights are now 2-5 in-conference and rank tenth in Big 12 standings with the win over WVU.
Whether or not West Virginia deserves a top 75 spot after this weekend is up for debate, but the Mountaineers have cemented themselves as firmly between ranked and unranked Big 12 competition thus far. This marks a shift historically for the up-and-coming Mountaineers, who hold two conference wins in a season for the first time since joining the Big 12 in 2012.
Against Houston on Friday, WVU made sure the newcomers knew it was not a free match win anymore. A pair of 6-1 wins on courts one and three earned WVU the doubles point early despite sophomore Maja Dodik and freshman Maya Bordereau trailing 4-3 at court two.
Riding that momentum, Dodik, junior Michaela Kucharova, and graduate student Ting-Pei Chang wrapped up their singles matches as quickly as they started. The three two-set victories brought WVU to four points and the match win.
Senior Momoko Nagato also took care of business rather quickly, winning a pair of 6-2 sets after initially dropping 6-1 to sophomore Sophie Schouten. Nagato now has 11 singles victories this season, which nearly matches her 15-win total from last season.
Also going to three sets in singles were WVU’s top two seeds, Maya Bordereau and graduate student Love-Star Alexis. Alexis seems to have settled in at court one, as she earned her second straight one-seed win 7-6 (3), 3-6, 1-0 (7) over senior Laura Slisane.
Bordereau, meanwhile, is still learning to take on top NCAA competition on court two but held her own against junior Maria Dzemeshkevich before falling 4-6, 6-4, 1-0 (7). Bordereau is now 8-7-1 on the season in singles and 3-6-1 on court two.
The resounding 6-1 victory put the Mountaineers on a two-match winning streak entering Sunday’s match against UCF, but the Knights challenged that momentum early. Looking for their second conference win, UCF took the coveted doubles point, which WVU has only won without once this year, in its 4-3 defeat of Virginia Tech.
Ting-Pei Chang and junior Tatiana Lipatova kept WVU’s doubles hopes alive after Nagato and Kucharova’s court one loss, but the 6-2 victory all but went to waste with UCF’s 6-4 defeat of Dodik and Bordereau. The once-dominant 10-3-3 pairing is now 2-2-1 in its last five outings.
Entering singles, Bordereau and Dodik took the hit of UCF’s momentum once again, as they were the first two Mountaineers to drop, 6-3, 6-0 and 6-2, 6-3 respectively. Bordereau’s opponent, junior Sophia Biolay, is ranked No. 119 by the ITA.
Love-Star Alexis was the next to drop, as she fell 6-4, 6-3 to junior Noel Saidenova at court one, and with that, UCF secured the match victory. Nagato fought but fell at court three, 7-6 (5), 6-4 before WVU earned its only match points from Michaela Kucharova and Tatiana Lipatova, who won 6-0, 6-1 and 6-1, 6-1 respectively.
Predominantly at courts five and six, Kucharova and Lipatova have been a reliable source of points for WVU this season. Both players sit at 7-1-2 on the season, with each player falling against the Texas Longhorns.
Despite the loss, there is no break for West Virginia in the coming week, as the Mountaineers take on the No. 1 Oklahoma State Cowboys Thursday in Stillwater, Okla. The match kicks off at 7 p.m. WVU plays unranked, 7-9 Kansas State the following Saturday at 1 p.m. in Manhattan, Kan.
Photo from WVU Women’s Tennis
