With five matches remaining in the regular season, Boston College women’s tennis already matched its highest win total in three years, in large part thanks to a surge in the back half of March. The Eagles won five of six, defeating three ACC opponents in the process—their only loss, a 4-3 decision at Virginia Tech. But on Friday afternoon, the team slid off the tracks.
For the first time in three weeks, head coach Nigel Bentley’s team lost a match by more than one point. In fact, the Eagles didn’t even put up a fight in Coral Gables, Fla. Miami recorded the first four points of the day and then tacked on two more just for good measure in the final stages of the contest to cap a dominant 6-1 win.
Right from the get-go, the No. 18 Hurricanes (11-6, 7-3 Atlantic Coast) assumed control of the match. Across the three doubles courts, Miami won the first eight games, jumping out to a commanding 4-1 lead in each of the ongoing sets. The rest was history.
First, No. 88 Dominika Paterova and Ulyana Shirokova polished off a 6-2 victory over Elene Tsokilauri and Jackie Urbinati. Moments later, another ranked duo—No. 82 Sinead Lohan and Ana Madcur—took down BC’s (11-8, 3-7) top pairing, All-ACC Third Teamer Asiya Dair and freshman Natasha Irani, 6-1. The third and final doubles set was cut short with No. 66 Estela Perez-Somarriba and Daniella Roldan ahead, 5-3, effectively dishing the Eagles’ Dasha Possokhova and Kylie Wilcox their second-straight loss.
BC didn’t fare any better in singles competition. The first match to conclude was also the best advertised. In the only ranked matchup of the day, sixth-ranked Perz-Somarriba routed No. 89 Dair, tallying her ninth victory over top-90 players this season and improving to 18-1 on the spring. To make matters worse for the Eagles, No. 75 Lohan defeated Wilcox in similar fashion, winning the first two sets, 6-1, 6-2. Once again failing to win more than two games in a set, BC’s Ross limped to a 6-2, 6-2 loss at the hands of Shirokova—the reigning ACC Freshman of the Week.
As soon as the Hurricanes put the match out of reach, BC finally mustered its first and only point of the afternoon. Jackie Urbanti manhandled Ana Madcur, 6-0, 6-3, in what was the junior’s third singles victory in the past four contests. But Miami’s Paterova reclaimed the Hurricanes’ five-point lead with her second-consecutive 6-3, 6-3 win, beating Tsokilauri. Close to an hour later, Roldan found herself in a back-and-forth affair with Irani. Luckily for the junior, she was able to sweat a three-set, tiebreaker victory to secure the team’s elusive sixth point—just the second time all season that Miami has reached that mark.
The loss bumps BC to 1-25 against its Coastal Division foe, including 0-18 in Coral Gables. While the all-time series might be lopsided, it’s safe to say that Bentley can’t be happy with his team’s performance, considering that the Eagles blew out the Hurricanes at home just a year ago. That said, BC will get another crack at a top-25 team on Sunday when it travels to Florida State to wrap up its four-game road trip—a stretch that, at this point, appears to have slightly derailed the Eagles’ promising campaign.
Featured Image by John Quackenbos / BC Athletics
