Lobos Earns No. 4 Seed in MW Tournament, Face Wyoming
Schedule
Mountain West Quarterfinals: Thurs, April 25, 2019 (10 am Pacific/11 am Mountain)
#4 New Mexico vs. #5 Wyoming
San Diego, California (Aztec Tennis Center)
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Mountain West Tournament Central
SAN DIEGO, Calif. — In Mountain West women’s tennis, there is no regular season champion, at least not until next year when all 11 teams will play each other. Instead, it’s divisional scheduling only, and New Mexico went 4-1 in the Mountain Division, tying with Air Force for the best record. However, until Monday night, no Lobo knew if that was good for anything, because what you want in an 11-team tournament is a first-round bye.
So there’s some good news and some bad news. The good? UNM got that opening round bye, earning a four-seed in the tournament. The bad? UNM faces the only conference team to beat them in the regular season, the Wyoming Cowgirls. That matchup will take place on Thursday at 10 am Pacific, 11 am Mountain in San Diego as the Aztecs are this year’s hosts.
Without a true conference schedule, conference tournament seeding is based on the entire season, strength of schedule and a couple of other factors. While one would think 4-1 would be a good seed, just two years ago UNM was the hottest team in the league entering the tournament at 4-1 in the league and having won six of seven. That team amazingly earned an 11-seed, while the other hottest team in the league, San Jose State, earned a three seed.
UNM swept it’s opening round match and then engaged in an epic nearly five-hour match with SJSU that went 4-3 in favor of the Spartans in what many thought was the defacto championship, and those folks were right. SJSU won the title two days later after walking over its other opponents 4-0 and 4-0.
This year, the MW Tournament truly is anyone’s for the taking. The top seed is UNLV, which went 14-6 on the season and has won five straight. They were the West Division champions. The No. 2 seed is Air Force, which went 21-2 on the year, but UNM handed them a loss on Friday. Air Force tied for the Mountain title with New Mexico and would have lost a tiebreaker if there were such a thing.
The three-seed is San Diego State which went 13-9 on the season, with New Mexico at 12-8 as the No. 4 seed. The Lobos have won nine of 10, that only loss to their quarterfinal opponent Wyoming, which is the No. 5 seed and went 13-7 on the year.
From there, the seeds are No. 6 Colorado State (10-9), No. 7 Utah State (11-10), No. 8 San Jose State (9-8), No. 9 Fresno State (9-11), No. 10 Boise State (7-11) and No. 11 Nevada (10-10)
The Lobos are looking for their first conference title since winning it all in 2015, a year that saw UNM defeat Wyoming in the title match.
Here is a breakdown of UNM’s projected lineup, plus how that lineup did against Wyoming, along with some tournament and tennis historical notes:
UNM vs. the field:
vs. #1 UNLV all-time: 5-20; in MW Tournament: 0-6
vs. #2 Air Force all-time: 19-5; in MW Tournament: 3-0
vs. #3 San Diego State all-time: 11-18; in MW Tournament: 6-3
vs. #5 Wyoming all-time: 18-7; in MW Tournament: 3-0
vs. #6 Colorado State all-time: 29-5; in MW Tournament: 1-3
vs. #7 Utah State all-time: 8-1; in MW Tournament: 0-0
vs. #8 San Jose State all-time: 4-1; in MW Tournament: 1-1
vs. #9 Fresno State all-time: 4-11; in MW Tournament: 0-1
vs. #10 Boise State all-time: 15-9; in MW Tournament: 1-0
vs. #11 Nevada all-time: 5-5; in MW Tournament: 3-0
vs. the 1 seeds in MW Tournament: 0-7
vs. the 2 seeds in MW Tournament: 0-4
vs. the 3 seeds in MW Tournament: 2-5
vs. the 4 seeds in MW Tournament: 4-0
vs. the 5 seeds in MW Tournament: 2-0
vs. the 6 seeds in MW Tournament: 5-0
vs. the 7 seeds in MW Tournament: 4-0
vs. the 8 seeds in MW Tournament: 2-1
vs. the 9 seeds in MW Tournament: 0-2
vs. the 10 seeds in MW Tournament: 1-0
vs. the 11 seeds in MW Tournament: 0-0
UNM as the No. 4 seed is 2-1
No. 1 Doubles – Danielle Quevedo/Hsiang-Wen “Albie” Huang
Season record: 0-1
Spring Record: 0-0
Last 10 matches: 0-1
Current Streak: L1
October 26 seems like a long time ago (Editor’s note, it was almost six months ago, so it kind of was). That day, during the Halloween Classic Spooktacular hosted by New Mexico, Danielle Quevedo and Hsiang-Wen “Albie” Huang played as a doubles tandem, losing 7-5 to Iowa State’s Annabella Bonadonna and Maty Cancini. That’s it. One match. Six months later, they are paired back up, playing at No. 1 doubles, making their spring debut in the quarterfinals against Wyoming.
No. 2 Doubles – Bronte Murgett/Natasha Munday
Season record: 15-1
Spring Record: 14-1 (3-0 at No. 2, 11-1 at No. 3)
Last 10 matches: 9-1
Current Streak: W7
As far as runs go, it’s hard to top with UNM’s two Brits have done. They played once in the fall, ironically on the exact same day that UNM’s Quevedo and Huang played together, October 26 against Iowa State. They won that day, and they’ve just never stopped.
The pair opened the spring with seven straight wins, dropped a match, and now they’ve won seven in a row again. It could be more…they were even or up in five unfinished matches as well. While both played have bolstered their record by becoming as good a doubles team as there is, both as just solid in doubles overall. Munday leads the team with 23 doubles wins, and she is 8-5 in doubles with other partners, and Murgett is 19-3 overall and 4-2 with others.
This pairing is the only one that saw action against Wyoming, and their match was even on serve and went unfinished.
No. 3 Doubles – Ruth Copas/Yue Lin “Polly” Chen
Season record: 1-0
Spring Record: 0-0
Last 10 matches: 1-0
Current Streak: W1
Back to Iowa State we go for UNM’s third doubles grouping in the Mountain West Tournament, and the second that hasn’t played together in nearly six months. The first meeting went well, a 6-2 win over Iowa State’s Tara Damnjanovic and Natalia Bravo.
Copas and Chen have played well in doubles, just with other partners. Copas is 12-16 overall including 12 matches at No. 1 doubles, and Chen is 19-12, needing just one more win to record at least 20 wins in both singles and doubles.
No. 1 Singles – Ruth Copas
Season record: 14-15
Spring Record: 6-10
Last 10 matches: 4-4
Current Streak: W1
Copas is not just the only senior on the team, but she is the only upperclassman and has the distinction of the only player to have a Senior Day for UNM in either 2018, 2019 or 2020, as there were no seniors last year and none next year. Copas is certainly the heart and soul of the team, coaxing a young team to the No. 4 seed.
She has turned in a few epic performances, including a 7-0 tiebreaker win on her Senior Day to clinch the win against New Mexico State. After a tough un of opponents that saw her lose five straight, Copas has turned it around over her last nine, going 4-3 and being up or even in two others. In that stretch she has played several tiebreakers and also several three-setters. Her match against Wyoming was one of those three-setters, losing to Tessa van der Ploeg 6-1, 3-6, 6-4.
No. 2 Singles – Bronte Murgett
Season record: 18-4
Spring Record: 13-3 (10-2 at No. 2, 3-1 at No. 3)
Last 10 matches: 9-0
Current Streak: W10
Bronte Murgett to most opponents looks like the type of person you want to play, as she is small in stature, and is always smiling. Then she obliterates her opponents and they are left wondering what just happened. That’s been happening since the second week of February, and no one has been able to solve the riddle of Murgett.
Bronte has won 10 straight matches since winning at Texas Tech 6-0, 6-3 over Francesca Sella. Since then she’s lost a grand total of three sets and won 21, winning 137 of 218 possible games. One of those wins came against Wyoming, UNM’s only point scored in that match as she won 6-2, 7-5 over Elisa Koonik.
No. 3 Singles – Hsiang-Wen “Albie” Huang
Season record: 13-13
Spring Record: 9-11 (2-4 at No. 2, 7-7 at No. 3)
Last 10 matches: 7-3
Current Streak: W4
Huang went through a major struggle in January and all of February, losing seven straight, with three love-set loses in there. Then, as inexplicably as her struggles came, they disappeared, and now Huang is one of UNM’s steadiest players, going a robust 7-2 over her last nine matches, and solidifying the No. 3 singles slot.
Huang turned it around with a 6-1, 7-5 win against UTEP’s Erandi Martinez, and since that win, she’s been on a tear, losing just twice on back-to-back outings to Wyoming and Colorado State. She’s won her last four, including a 6-3, 6-3 win over Air Force’s Meredith Jones. One of her loses in that 7-2 stretch was to Wyoming’s Maria Oreshkina 4-6, 6-2, 6-2.
No. 4 Singles – Danielle Quevedo
Season record: 12-12
Spring Record: 7-8 (6-7 at No. 4, 1-1 at No. 5)
Last 10 matches: 5-3
Current Streak: W1
Quevedo isn’t all that different from the other Lobos in the lineup … she’s playing her best tennis. She hit a rough spot from January 30 through March 29, winning just one match. But since that Wyoming match on March 29 when she only got to 2-2 against Ana Fernandez, she’s been nearly unstoppable. In those last five matches, she is 4-1, going 4-0 in conference play including a solid 7-5, 6-1 win over Air Force’s Kristin Kerrigan.
Quevedo is known to get hot. A Mountain West Player of the Week last year, She also had a four-match winning streak in the fall as well.
No. 5 Singles – Natasha Munday
Season record: 16-12
Spring Record: 8-7 (2-2 at No. 4, 5-5 at No. 5, 1-0 at No. 6)
Last 10 matches: 5-3
Current Streak: W1
If Copas is the heart and soul, Munday is the voice and vocal leader among the large group of sophomores in the lineup. Munday is 8-7 in the spring, and in a statistical improbability, of those 15 matches, 14 have been straight set affairs.
Munday has bounced around the lineup a little but seems to have settled into the No. 5 single slot, flip-flopping with Quevedo. Since moving, she is 2-1. She does have a match to avenge against Wyoming, losing a crazy one 7-6 (12-10), 6-4.
No. 6 Singles – Yue Lin “Polly” Chen
Season record: 22-6
Spring Record: 11-4 (2-0 at No. 5, 9-4 at No. 6)
Last 10 matches: 7-0
Current Streak: W7
Chen’s current winning streak of seven straight matches is the third different winning streak of at least six matches won this year, and the reality is the current seven match win streak could be 11, as she was up in four other matches. Her 22 singles wins easily leads the team, and she opened the season at 6-0 and 12-2. Her only blip on the map was a three-match losing streak against Colorado, Denver and Utah.
Since that streak, she has picked up seven straight set wins, and counting the unfinished matches she has won 17 sets to just one loss, the best streak of any Lobo this season. One of the matches on the current streak was an unfinished match against Wyoming, where she was up early against Mihaela Kaftanova.