Fresh Off Three Wins, Women's Tennis Heads North
Wednesday, January 30 — at Colorado (11 a.m.): Live Stats
Friday, February 1 — at Denver (12:30 p.m.): Live Stats
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The University of New Mexico women’s tennis team is pretty hot right now. It needs to stay that way as the team heads up into the frozen north to take on Colorado and Denver on Wednesday and Friday respectively. Wednesday’s match against Colorado will be at 11 a.m. at the Rocky Mountain Tennis Center, and Friday’s match will be at 12:30 p.m. at the Denver Tennis Park. Both matches will have live stats available.
The Lobos are coming off a big home weekend in which the team swept its way to a 3-0 mark, improving to 3-2 overall. UNM opened on Friday with a 6-1 win over Abilene Christian, and then topped Division II Cameron 5-0. To end the weekend, the Lobos took down UTSA 4-1. THe big story of the weekend was the play of Yue Lin “Polly” Chen, who went a perfect 6-0, winning all three doubles matches and all three singles matches.
In doubles, playing No. 2 and teaming with Hsiang-Wen “Albie” Huang, she went 3-0, winning 6-4, 6-0 and 6-1. In singles she opened at No. 6 against Abilene Christian, and then moved up to play No. 5 against Cameron and UTSA. It didn’t matter where she played. After winning an opening set tiebreaker, she won 30 of her next 40 games in rolling to her 6-0 weekend. To add to it, she even picked up the clinching wins against UTSA and Abilene Christian.
Now Chen wasn’t the only Lobo to play well. Bronte Murgett played No. 3 singles and doubles and won all three doubles matches and her only completed singles match. She was leading in the other two when the matches were suspended, including sitting on match point against Cameron. Overall the Lobos won eight of nine doubles matches and 12 of 14 singles matches, with significant leads in three of the four suspended singles matches.
But now UNM faces a pair of teams that are both 1-1, and both matches are on the road. The Lobos will enter with the knowledge of two previous solid efforts on the road, losing to Baylor 5-2 and TCU 5-2. Colorado enters the match on Wednesday 1-1, having a 7-0 blowout of Montana State to its credit, but a gut-wrenching 4-3 loss at Air Force as well. In that match CU led 3-2 but lost the final two matches, including a third-set tiebreaker 7-5 with the match even at 3-apiece. Denver will also be 1-1 entering Friday’s match, and they have a pair of 4-0 decisions, beating Oregon 4-0 (although Oregon had a chance to win the other three matches) and then losing to Pepperdine 4-0. Denver features a pair of ranked players in Bianca Mok (No. 89) and Arisha Ladhani (No. 89).
UNM doesn’t return home until Friday, March 8 against Northern Arizona.