BOX SCORE
SURPRISE, Ariz. – The UWF women's tennis team is making a habit of falling behind 2-1 after doubles play. The Argonauts are also making a habit of playing some strong singles.
And on Thursday in the 104-degree desert heat in the Valley of the Sun, UWF turned in quite possibly the gutsiest performance in program history.
Fourth-ranked UWF was staring up at second-ranked Hawaii Pacific, 4-1, and was 'dead in the water' while trailing in two of the remaining four matches.
Diana Vlad got the singles scoring going for the Argos with a 6-1, 6-3 win at No. 5.
Samantha Echevarria followed with a 6-2, 1-6, 6-2 win at No. 4 to cut the HPU lead to 4-3.
And then the big comebacks started to materialize. First it was at No. 3 where 54th-ranked
Jordana Lujan was down a set to 21st-ranked Oceane Adam and looking at a 3-0 hole. Lujan fought back to cut the margin to 4-3 and again after being down 5-4, went up 6-5 before taking a second-set tiebreak.
The third set was another tight affair with each player breaking the other before Lujan won games 10 and 11 to pull ahead 6-5. Adam forced the tiebreak but wasn't able to hold off Lujan who scored the final four points in the 7-2 breaker.
That knotted the match at 4-4 and put all eyes on No. 6 where
Heather Mixon was splitting tiebreakers in the first two sets with Barbora Kijasova. The players traded the first three games of the third set before Kijasova went up 4-3. Mixon won two games while playing with the wind and closed out the match a game later with a 6-4 outcome before her teammates joined her on the court in celebration. It was her 30th victory of the season and saw her improve to 4-0 in 3-setters.
It was the fourth time in six postseason matches that the Argonauts fell behind 2-1 after doubles play. And it was the fourth time UWF got what it needed to do in singles play to pick up the victory.
HPU (21-3) had its 10-match winning streak snapped, falling in the semifinals for the third straight season and the fifth time in the last six years.
UWF (31-3) will play top-ranked and defending national champion Barry (27-0) on Friday at 1:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time (3:00 p.m. CT). The Buccaneers have also faced 2-1 doubles deficits in their last two matches.
The Argos are playing in the finals for the second time in program history. They lost the 2007 title match to BYU Hawaii.
