(UPDATE) Women's Tennis Beats #4 Gators and #1 Stanford - On To The Final (and #101)!!!

Great news from our women's tennis team. As Charnaw says, it's always great to be a Bruin. -M

Okay, so the baseball team is in a late season swoon (and the softball team bowed out early unexplicably). . . but let's hear it for the 12th ranked lady Bruins tennis squad that upset highly ranked Northwestern yesterday and just nipped our new nemesis, #4 Florida (4-3) to advance to the Final Four in a hostile environment in Athens, Georgia.  

After winning the doubles round to take a much-needed 1-0 lead going to singles, we went up 3-0 on the strength of some great perfomances by Yasmin Shnack at #3 (6-4, 6-1), and Elizabeth Lumpkin at #6 (6-2, 6-4).  As you might suspect, the gators did not bow down and stormed back with tough wins at #1, #2 and #4. The 3-3 match hinged at #5, where unranked Alex McGoodwin squared off against 58th-ranked Csilla Borsanyi of UF.  However, there's a reason why they play the games, and the mismatch on paper was not reflected on the court where McGoodwin's gutsy effort and strong serve overwhelmed her opponent who fell 6-4, 7-6 (7-4)!  

We next face the winner of the #1 seed Stanford - #9 seed Miami match Monday for the right to play in the finals. In case you are wondering, we lost to Furd twice this year during regular season conference play by a 4-3 score each time, so we definitively have a shot against the Cardinal(especially on a neutral court). 

Update [2007-5-21 21:11:18 by charnaw]:#12 UCLA has just knocked out #1 Stanford (which was 24-1 going in) and will be playing for #101 tomorrow!!! Like yesterday, the Bruins jumped ahead 1-0 in doubles, but unlike yesterday, we were heavy underdogs in each singles match.

At #1, Riza Zalameda (ranked #15) was annihilated by #8 ranked Theresa Logar of Stanford 6-2, 6-2, bringing the teams to a 1-1 tie. The deadlock was short-lived as #56 Yasmin Schnack of UCLA blasted #14 Celia Durkin in an epic upset 6-2, 6-4 at singles #3.

We went up 3-1 at singles #2 with another upset . . . this time #40 Tracy Lin nipped Stanford's #17 Anne Yelsey 6-4, 6-4. We had all the momentum, but we still had singles #4, #5 and #6 to go. Furd had beaten us twice this year by 4-3 scores, so it was clear this would go to the wire . . . and it did.

Unranked Alex McGoodwin, one of the stars against fourth-seed UF yesterday, lost a tough 3-set match to 20th-ranked Jessica Nguyen of Stanford, bringing the Cardinal within 1 at 3-2. It appeared that the winner of singles #4 would decide this thing, as it was the only evenly-matched pairing between UCLA's Ashley Joelson (ranked #107) and Furd's Whihtney (sic) Deason (ranked #96).

As the afternoon sun began to set and the lights came on, Ashley dropped the first set in a tiebreaker, and things looked bleak because unranked Elizabeth Lumpkin dropped her first set in pairing #6 too. However, BOTH bruins stormed back to win their respective second sets . . . and Joelson polished off Deason 6-7, 6-1, 6-3 to clinch the upset, 4-2!!!

WE PLAY #3 Georgia Tech for #101 tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kudos to men's and women's golf as well (each will be playing in their respective NCAA finals in upcoming weeks)!!!

ITS ALWAYS GREAT TO BE A BRUIN!