Tech women’s tennis into NCAA Elite Eight
The fourth-ranked Georgia Tech women’s team advanced Thursday to the quarterfinals of the NCAA championship with a 4-3 win over No. 13 Pepperdine in the round of 16 in Winston-Salem, N.C.
It’s the farthest that the Yellow Jackets have advanced since 2008 and is just the third Elite Eight appearance in school history. Tech won the national championship in 2007, which remains the school’s only national title awarded by the NCAA (as opposed to football national championships determined by polls).
The Jackets (24-5) will play No. 14 UCLA on Saturday at 4 p.m. in the quarterfinals. The winner will face the winner of the Vanderbilt-Florida State quarterfinal matchup on Monday for a spot in the finals. Vanderbilt is the top seed in the tournament.
Tech bounced Pepperdine with freshman Victoria Flores securing the winning point at No. 6 singles. The Jackets lost the doubles point, but then claimed wins (in chronological order) from Nami Otsuka (No. 5 singles), Paige Hourigan (No. 1) and Ida Jarlskog (No. 4). That left the No. 6 singles match between Flores and Pepperdine’s Dzina Milovanovic to decide the outcome.
After winning the first set in a tiebreak, Flores dropped the second set 6-3 and then broke Milovanovic twice to take the third set 6-4.
An earlier version of this story gave the incorrect opponent in the semifinals for the Tech-UCLA winner.
About the Author
Ken Sugiura is a sports columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Formerly the Georgia Tech beat reporter, Sugiura started at the AJC in 1998 and has covered a variety of beats, mostly within sports.
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