SEATTLE, Wash. — For University of New Mexico sophomore Bronte Murgett, she entered Wednesday’s road match at Seattle University with a streak of two straight clinching wins for UNM. On Wednesday, she made it three, and right afterwards, she picked up a league honor. Murgett’s 6-4, 6-3 win against Seattle at No. 2 singles was her third straight match clincher for the Lobos, and for her 3-0 record last week, she was named the Mountain West Women’s Tennis Player of the Week.
The clinching win and the league honor occurred within three minutes of each other. The win was the third straight for New Mexico, pushing the Lobos to 6-7 on the season while Seattle dropped to 5-8. The win was UNM’s first win away from home, and now UNM can get its record even on Friday when the Lobos travel to Cheney, Washington to face Eastern Washington at 11 a.m. Mountain Time.
The only scuffle of the day against Seattle was in doubles where the Lobos and Seattle split the first two games with Murgett and teammate Natasha Munday winning 6-1 but the No. 1 team of Ruth Copas and Danielle Quevedo lost 6-3. That put the doubles point on No. 2 doubles, but UNM’s Yue Lin Chen and Hsiang-Wen Huang took a 7-5 win, giving UNM the double point and a 1-0 lead.
From there, it was easy as UNM won three straight set singles matches and were leading in the other three when the match ended. Huang picked up the first win with a 6-2, 6-1 victory at No. 3 singles, and then Copas earned a win at No. 1, taking a 6-3, 6-2 decision. UNM just needed one of the last four, and with UNM up in all of them, it was Murgett that got the clincher. She took a 6-4, 6-3 win, getting the clincher just before Yue Lin Chen won her match as she was up 6-2, 5-3.
Notes: Murgett has now won four straight singles matches … she improved to 11-4 overall … Chen was one-point away from her 17th win.