Idaho women’s tennis began its first home weekend on a four-match win streak and on the hunt for its first WAC win of the season.
The Vandals (16-6, 1-1 WAC) beat the Nevada Wolf Pack (5-9, 0-2 WAC) in a grueling comeback victory Friday, getting theWAC win and increasing their win streak to five. But the streak ended Saturday when Idaho lost 2-5 to the Pac-12 Oregon Ducks (12-8).
Tony Marcolina | Argonaut Sophomore Vicky Lozano returns the ball during a singles match against Oregon Saturday at the Memorial Gym tennis courts. The women fell 5-2, putting them at an overall 16-6 record.
Idaho coach Daniel Pollock said the Wolf Pack came in to the match the No. 3 team in the WAC statistically. He said for such a young team, Idaho played beyond its years to get the victory.
“Coming back after such a huge let down and such a close doubles point, coming back and taking the singles point even after we started slow is really big,” Pollock said.
Idaho won the No. 3 doubles match 8-6 and lost the No. 2 match 8-5. Idaho’s Vicky Lozano and Almudena Sanz fell just short in the tie-break, losing 9-8 (7-4) and the Wolf Pack took the doubles point.
Idaho won its bottom three matches, tying it up at 3-3 with only senior Molly Knox remaining.
“She came out just firing really well and after the first set I just thought let’s keep working on focusing on holding serve and keeping the ball in and working her to see if she came off her game,” Knox said.
The plan worked and with the team and fans focused on one match, Knox won the next two sets 6-4, 6-4.
The Vandals were on the court until 8:30 p.m. and had just 12 hours before returning to the court for one of their harder match-ups of the season against the Ducks.
“In those big power conferences, people don’t play friendly tennis,” Pollock said. “They are out there to beat you and they are not horrible people, they’re just going to do whatever it takes to beat you and they are going to get pumped up, they are going to yell, they are going to scream, and the matches are going to be louder.”
Lozano said the Ducks like to get in an opponent’s face.
“We felt they were a little bit aggressive with their attitudes but our coach told us that the good teams are going to be like that so we have to handle that and get over it,” Lozano said.
Lozano and her doubles partner Sanz seemed to handle it fine when they beat the No. 50 doubles team in the nation 8-3.
“I think Almu and me really fit together and for this match we were up, and we decided to finish it because yesterday we were up and kind of felt more confident than we were supposed to be so this time we decided to finish it,” Lozano said.
That was the only doubles match Idaho won and could not complete the comeback victory in singles for a second straight day.
“Vicky and Almu beat the fiftieth ranked doubles paring right there. Vicky has points to win her match, Almu wins her match, and Bety gets a win at No. 6, that’s definitely not a disappointing weekend,” Pollock said. “This weekend is still a success to us, we did what we set out to do which was to win the WAC match — big win, probably the first time we have ever beat Nevada so it was huge.”
The Vandals hit San Francisco Thursday for more WAC matches and play Friday at San Jose State before La. Tech comes to Moscow Sunday. The WAC Championship starts April 26.
Charles Crowley can be reached at [email protected]