“The message I want to make sure our team understands is that we keep knocking on the door against great opponents, and now we have to barge our way through it”, head coach Alison Ojeda said. “We gave ourselves a fantastic advantage by winning the doubles point. In my opinion, NC State is easily one of the best doubles teams in the country. They prove it year after year. There’s a very clear plan on how to defend what they do and I thought our girls did a fantastic job with that to win the point and give us a head start going into singles. We know they’re a big serving, big ball-striking team. We know that they’re used to being a top-five team in the country, and they strongly believe in everything they’re doing at every spot. I still think that our team came out ready to win. We competed hard, put ourselves in a great situation and came up a bit short.”
Sofia Cabezas picked up her second ranked win of the year by defeating No. 3 Amelia Rajecki, 2-6, 6-4, 7-5, in singles. Her win was the first over a top-foe by a Lady Volunteer this season.
Tennessee (5-2) and NC State (6-0) competed in a back-and-forth affair in doubles, with the teams splitting the first two matches. The Lady Vols dropped the first match on court two, with Alana Wolfberg and Esther Adeshina falling to No. 7 Amelia Rajecki and Maddy Zampardo, 3-6. Catherine Aulia and Lauren Anzalotta handed the Wolfpack its first loss in doubles by defeating No. 52 Gabriella Broadfoot and Abigail Rencheli to even the score.
After trailing 3-5 at one point in the match, Sofia Cabezas and Elza Tomase stormed back to defeat No. 9 Sophie Abrams and Anna Zyryanova, 7-5, to clinch the doubles point.
After taking the doubles point, the Lady Vols could not carry the momentum into singles and only registered two of the three points they needed.
Singles play opened with Aulia falling to No. 40 Anna Zryranova in a 0-6, 4-6 loss at the number three spot. No. 115 Elza Tomase forced a third set, but came up short 4-6, 6-4, 6-0 against No. 19 Sophie Abrams on court four.
No. 91 Wolfberg dropped her match against No. 27 Rencheli on court two, 6-4, 0-6, 4-6, to increase the Wolfpack lead to 3-1.
Cabezas picked up Tennessee’s first win in singles, defeating No. 3 Rajecki in a hard-fought 2-6, 6-4, 7-5 result.
Adeshina then took the first set…
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