By Brandon Burke, UT Martin Sports Information
ASHEVILLE, N.C. – Concluding the weekend with a doubles victory for the fifth time out of their last six appearances and a one-on-one win to go along with it, the University of Tennessee at Martin tennis team took part in their first head-to-head match in two weeks on Sunday afternoon, ultimately taking a 4-1 setback at the hands of a red-hot UNC Asheville squad.
Winners of their first eight contests to begin the calendar year out of the Big South, the Bulldogs were able to successfully negate a tag-team win from junior-freshman duo Jillian Niedzialowski/Lia Espinal by grabbing the next two doubles sets. Niedzialowski and Espinal’s prior W – their third of 2022 as a group – came via a 6-2 clip over UNCA’s Lize Alet Morkel and Beatrice Faureng.
As the match transitioned into singles competition, the Skyhawks’ lone official win occurred off the racket of junior Aziza Aubin, her fifth one-on-one triumph of the semester all in consecutive fashion. Aubin got the better of Faureng 6-3 repeated to mark the roster’s 34th singles win of the season.
Espinal and senior Mizuki Sakurai were both interlocked in back-and-forth series before UNC Asheville clinched the match elsewhere on the court, where the latter grabbed a 6-5 second-set win over Kendall Byers that would have forced a winner-take-all third set had the Bulldogs not finished the match overall at nearly the same time.
Sunday’s duel represented the penultimate non-conference bout of 2022 for UT Martin, who will stay on the road 48 hours from now to head south and face College of Charleston. The Cougars are currently riding an impressive nine-game winning streak that has only stretched over a ten-day gap. A 7-0 Sunday shutout over Towson improved the CAA school to 13-5 on the year.
First serve in Charleston is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday.
Graphic courtesy of UT Martin Sports Information