Tulsa — Georgia Tech is getting pretty good at this women's tennis thing.

The Yellow Jackets continued their successful defense of their 2007 national championship on Thursday with a late-night 4-2 win over Texas. With the victory, No. 3-ranked Tech (22-5) advances to the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Championships, where it will face sixth-seeded Florida (23-2) at 6 p.m. Saturday at the University of Tulsa's Case Tennis Center.

This one was a come-from-behind victory for the Jackets, who dropped the doubles point for only the seventh time all season. That was not a good omen as three of those ended as losses.

But the Jackets quickly flexed their muscles in singles. They won first sets at Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Only Noelle Hickey, who fell 1-6 in the opening set at No. 6, failed to draw early blood in singles.

After Kristi Miller, Amanda McDowell and Christy Striplin secured their matches, it came down to Tech's Kirsten Flower at No. 5 singles. Up 5-4 on Maggie Mello and serving for the match, she let loose a service winner, a volley winner, an ace and another service winner to clinch the match about 10 past midnight.

"She's a tough, gritty competitor," Tech coach Bryan Shelton said of Flowers, who is ranked 46th nationally. "She likes to fight and battle. She's won some matches for us, including a few at the national indoors, and she's playing with a lot of confidence right now."

Tennis analyst Patrick McEnroe predicted the Gators would "beat up on" Georgia Tech in the quarterfinals during the tournament selection show when it was televised two weeks ago. Shelton and his players haven't forgotten.

"He didn't give us much of a shot to win this match coming up, so we have a lot of motivation on our side," Shelton said. "But in these tournaments it's win or go home, and these girls don't want to go home. They want to stay till the end. That's motivation enough."

Florida was a 4-1 winner over Vanderbilt in the other late match. Gators' coach Roland Thornqvist wasn't thrilled to hear about McEnroe's prediction.

"Did he predict the winning lottery numbers for this week, too?" Thornqvist quipped. "We know Georgia Tech is very good because they have a bunch of returners from the national championship team. Obviously we'll be the underdogs, which is an unusual situation for us at Florida but one we'll relish."

It was a particularly sweet victory for Tech considering the Longhorns had knocked them out of national tournaments the other two times they had met. Texas knocked the Jackets out of the 2005 NCAAs and the 2006 National Indoors.

Shelton's chief concern was shoring up the Jackets' doubles play. It was not a good omen when Texas dispatched the Jackets 8-6 at both the No. 1 and No. 2 doubles positions. It was just the second loss all season for Tech's No. 2 duo of Hickey and Whitney McCray, which had won 10 straight, and their first defeat in dual-match play.

"You're always a little concerned when you lose the doubles point," Shelton said. "You put a lot of pressure on yourself to win four. But we did it against Fresno State in the round of 16 last year, and at least this should give us some confidence to know we can win this way if we have to."

On the other side of the bracket, top-seeded Northwestern defeated Fresno State 4-1; fourth-seeded Stanford beat Clemson 4-0, fifth-seeded Baylor got by Miami 4-1 and No. 8 California edged No. 9 Duke 4-3. Also, No. 7 UCLA defeated USC.