May 21, 2015
WACO, Texas – After falling to UCLA’s third-ranked team in the country on Tuesday, No. 18 Ashleigh Antal and Astra Sharma were looking for redemption coming into Thursday’s match in the NCAA Doubles Tournament.
The Bruins’ Harrion/McPhillips ended the Commodores’ 19-match win streak at No. 2 doubles in a close 8-5 victory.
“I thought we served really well near the end,” said Antal. “That was key. We didn’t return super well in the beginning, but we really picked it up. We really made it about coming into the net and trying to move into the net a lot more. We also tried to make it about volleys and getting the ball up and
down a lot. We just played them two days ago and they beat us, so we had an idea of what we wanted to do, which was good.”
Thursday evening the opponents were the same, but the outcome was different as Antal/Sharma powered through their first NCAA doubles match to take the victory 6-4, 6-4.
“I thought a big key was our variety,” said Sharma, “throwing in the lob a lot. First serve percentage for me was a big thing, but we were just really trying to play a solid doubles because they’re a good team and they don’t miss much. I guess going forward, we just need to be doing pretty much the
same thing, which is staying solid and having good percentages.”
While not the ultimate goal, if Antal/Sharma win tomorrow’s 12:30 CT quarterfinal match against Pepperdine’s No. 23 Matea Cutura Christine Maddox the duo will earn All-American status.
Earlier Thursday afternoon No. 20 Courtney Colton and Sydney Campbell fell to Clemson’s No. 4 Beatrice Gumulya and Jessy Rompies. The tandem fought hard throughout the first set, as the lead bounced back and forth. With the 6-5 advantage, the Tigers rallied one again forcing a first set tiebreaker. Clemson took the first set from VU 7-6(5), and proceeded to play top-level tennis as the shutout Campebell/Colton 6-0 in the second set.
Prior to doubles action, Campbell competed in her second round singles match. Battling Texas A&M’s Gavrilovska, the sophomore fell to the Aggie 6-4, 6-3.
