Lobos Win Second Straight, Top USU 4-1
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Maria Sodre won a pair of matches, and New Mexico battled all the way through for a second straight win, topping Utah State 4-1 in a match played at Air Force in Colorado Springs. The Lobos moved to 9-5 on the season and 2-3 in the Mountain West. Utah State dropped to 5-10 and 0-5. The Lobos take on Boise State tomorrow at 10 am.
The match was a gut-check of sorts for the Lobos, and passed that with flying colors. The first guy check came in singles, as top pair Leonie Hoppe and Katherine Jhang lost 6-1 to put UNM into a 1-0 hole, but UNM as it was losing there was winning handily at No. 2 doubles. After Hsuan Huang and Maud Vandeputte finished off a 6-2 win, all eyes went to No. 3 doubles, where Sodre and Sarah O’Connor pulled out a 7-5 win for a 1-0 lead.
In singles, the Lobos were bouyed not so much by the matches they won, but by one they didn’t lose. UNM took the opening sets in four of the six matches, and the match moved quickly to 2-1 in favor of the Lobos as Hoppe won at No. 4 singles over Magdalena Pureco 6-2, 6-3 but Jhang lost at No. 2 to Lisa Kung 6-4, 7-5.
At No. 5 singles, Huang lost a second set tiebreaker 7-4 after winning her first set, and her match moved to a third set. At No. 6, Sodre did likewise, winning the first set 7-5 but losing the second 6-2. While they battled, Sarah O’Connor was doing the same at No. 1, splitting her first two sets 6-2, winning the first and losing the second.
The oddball if you will was Vandeputte, who lost the first set 6-2 and was down a match point in the second set. However, she fought that off. And much like her coach Vicky Maes always says … just stay alive as long as possible, because it puts pressure on the other matches. Vandeputte apparently was wearing that as a t-shirt under her uniform. Her opponent Monique Burton had one match point, but Vandeputte saved it. Then a second, which she saved. Down 6-5 and 40-15, that gave Burton two more match points, but Vandeputte saved the third and the fourth, and went to a tiebreak.
That started off horrifically, as the first six points went to Burton, so at the change, Vandeputte faced six match points down 6-0. Now, whatever the coaches said at this point should be bottled up and sold to other tennis coaches, because Vandeputte took over. She fought off all six points and miraculously tied the set at 6-6. After the change, of course she went down 7-6, so she faced, and saved, an 11th match point. She then won three straight and stayed alive, winning 9-7.
As that was happening, O’Connor pushed Zeynap Ozturk to the limit, leading 5-4 in the third, but it was Sodre and Huang who iced it, each winning going away 6-0 in the third set to complete a 4-1 win, a win that gives UNM two straight and some momentum into a tough match on Saturday against a tough Boise State squad.
NOTES: Huang moved into second on the team with 14 singles wins … O’Connor and Sodre are now 10-2 in the spring in doubles, and 12-5 overall as a pair … Huang and Vandeputte lead the team with 14 doubles wins together (they are 14-3 overall).