The No. 51 Utah women’s tennis team dropped both matches on its weekend road trip in Washington, losing 4-2 at No. 52 Washington State and 4-0 at No. 55 Washington. The Utes’ record in Pac-12 conference play now stands at 1-3.
One of the main reasons for the losses, said head coach Mat Iandolo, is the difficulty of playing on the road.
“I think it’s a little bit challenging for a young team to be successful on the road in this league, but I think we’re making progress,” Iandolo said. “The biggest thing is lack of familiarity. The other thing is, there definitely is an imbalance in officiating on the road, so you have to be used to maybe not getting the fairness you might be used to getting at home.”
On Friday, Utah faced the Cougars in Pullman for its first Pac-12 road match of the season. The Utes won the doubles point, as Taylor Calton and Luisa Da Rosa defeated Barbora Michalkova and Aneta Miksovska on the No. 3 court, 6-4. Margo Pletcher and Brianna Turley clinched the point for Utah by squeezing out a victory over Washington State’s Maria Biryukova and Trang Huynh at the No. 1 doubles spot, 7-5.
After scoring the lead, things quickly went downhill for the Utes, as they lost all but one singles match to the Cougars. Jena Cheng fell to Huynh at the No. 4 spot, 6-4, 6-4 as WSU evened up the match. Biryukova gave the Cougars the lead when she defeated Sarah Richter on the No. 2 court, 7-6, 6-1. Washington State then extended the lead to 3-1 as Donika Bashota beat Pletcher at the No. 1 spot, 6-3, 7-5.
Turley prevented the Cougars from claiming the victory, beating Michalkova on Court 3, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4, to pull the Utes within one. But Miksovska struck the final blow to Utah by beating Calton at the fifth and final spot, 6-3, 7-6.
The next day, the Utes headed five hours east to Seattle to face the Huskies.
Washington won the doubles point and set the tone for the rest of the match early. Pletcher and Turley fell to the No. 28-ranked doubles team in the country, Nour Abbesand Miki Kobayashi, 6-0 at the No. 1 spot, and Calton and Da Rosa were defeated 6-1 by the No. 37-ranked doubles team in the nation, Tami Grende and Kenadi Hance to clinch the point for UW.
Singles play went a little better for Utah, but not by much. Abbes beat Pletcher on the first court 6-2, 6-1 to put the Huskies up by two. Stacey Fung took down Richter, 6-1, 6-2, and then Washington clinched the match when Grende beat Cheng in three sets, 6-1, 2-6, 6-3.
“Against Washington, the match was a little closer than the score would indicate,” Iandolo said. “It looked for a little while like we might be able to win at three, four, five and six.”
Up next for the Utes is a California road trip to face Cal and Stanford. Cal, the No. 1 team in the nation, is 13-0, while Stanford is No. 20 in the latest ITA rankings. Iandolo says the key to upsetting the Golden Bears is to get a good start.
“When you’re playing a team that clearly is the best team in the country, they’re fairly confident,” he said. “If you don’t do anything to knock them off-stride in the beginning, it becomes very difficult, so the start is definitely key.”
The Utes face Cal at 2:30 p.m. MT on Friday and Stanford at 1 p.m. MT on Saturday.
@JoeColesChrony