UWF-LYNN WT NCAA BOX SCORE

PENSACOLA, Fla. – UWF head women's tennis coach Derrick Racine knew Sunday's NCAA South II Regional title match with Lynn had the potential to be a marathon match. His suspicions were confirmed during the first hour of play when two of the three doubles matches went into lengthy extra-point tiebreakers.
 
At the end of the 90 minutes that it took to complete the doubles portion of the match, UWF found itself trailing second-seeded and fifth-ranked Lynn, 2-1.
 
"We were down eight match points (in the Nos. 2 & 3 doubles) and got a huge win at No. 3 doubles to only be down 2-1 after doubles," Racine said.
 
Lynn got the first point of the day at No. 1 when Klaudia Boczova and Diana Bogolii cruised to an 8-1 win.

Then the emotion and intensity on courts two and three took center stage.
 
Lynn appeared ready to score another point on the middle court as Eliska Petrackova and Anastacia Parkin led Paula Coyos and Diana Vlad, 7-3. But the UWF duo won four-consecutive games to put the pressure on Lynn and eventually send it to a tiebreak. The Argos ultimately dropped the match, 9-8, but made a statement that they were not going to roll over against the 3-time national champions - especially with a large home crowd surrounding the courts at the Ralph "Skeeter" Carson Tennis Complex on campus.
 
UWF earned its first team point on court three when Jordana Lujan and Samantha Echevarria outlasted Federica Mordegan and Eleonora Liga, 9-8 - themselves needing a 10-8 tiebreak victory.
 
In singles play, the sixth-ranked Boczova claimed a 6-0, 6-0 win over 17th-ranked Coyos at No. 1 to put the Fighting Knights up 3-1.
 
Then the momentum started to shift to the Argonauts. UWF was up a set in three matches and had split sets in another.
 
68th-ranked Ines Nicault defeated Mordegan, 6-3, 6-2 on court two. Echevarria won the final three games of a 6-4 first set over Petrackova before closing the match with a 6-1 second stanza.
 
Heather Mixon put the host team up 4-3 with a 6-1, 7-5 victory at No. 6. She was in danger of splitting sets when Parkin went up 5-4 in the second before the Argo junior won the final three games for the match.
 
Liga outlasted Vlad in three sets, 6-1, 3-6, 6-4, to put the attention on court three with Lujan and Bogolii.
 
Lujan got one of the biggest outcomes in the match when she claimed a first-set tiebreak, 7-2, an hour earlier. Lujan went up 2-0 in the second before Bogolii won three-straight games for a 3-2 lead. The players fought fatigue – and leg cramps for Lujan – as they held serve with Bogolii leading 5-4. Just as two teammates had done prior, Lujan won the final three games to clinch the title and set off a wild celebration with her teammates.
 
"Each one of the first set wins were huge," Racine said. "Anytime you can get those on a day like today where you are looking a five-and-a-half-hour-match, its big. (Bogolii) knew that if she was going to beat (Lujan), she was going to have to be out there another hour and that was huge for us."
 
"I think they all believed in themselves. We had worked hard all year and we knew we could win. We just had to dig deep down and believe it."
 
UWF (28-3) defeated Lynn (20-5) for just the second time in 11 NCAA matches. The Knights had eliminated the Argos in two of the last three NCAA regional finals. UWF will now make its 12th appearance in the NCAA Round of 16 and its first since 2013.

The 28 wins for the Argonauts are now the second-most in program history, trailing only the 29 in 1985 - the fifth year of the program's existence.
 
UWF will join 15 other regional winners from across the country in the NCAA Division II Women's Tennis Championships in Surprise, Ariz., May 8-11. Their first round opponent will be announced next week with the match beginning at either 2 or 6 p.m. Central Time on Tuesday, May 8.