No. 32 SMU W-Tennis Downs No. 31 Texas A&M In NCAA First Round

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (SMU) – With the match tied at three points apiece and both team’s seasons hanging in the balance, SMU’s Ashley Turpin rallied for a thrilling three-set victory at No. 6 singles to propel SMU into the NCAA Championship second round for a school-record third-straight season.

The No. 32 Mustangs (22-5) advance to face No. 12 Florida State Seminoles, who earlier in the day dispatched of Southern, on Sunday at 1:00 p.m. at the George P. Mitchell Tennis Center for a berth in the Round of 16.

In doubles, all three courts had the match-winning play in progress simultaneously. Texas A&M’s 86th-ranked team of Christi Liles and Christi Potgieter finished off the Mustang’s 57th-ranked tandem of Marta Lesniak and Aleksandra Malyarchikova, 8-3, at the No. 1 line.

Edyta Cieplucha and Heather Steinbauer took control of their contest and won the final three games at No. 2 to close out an 8-5 victory against Stephanie Davidson and Morgan Frank.

Just moments later, A&M’s Janelle Cuthbertson and Nazari Urbina completed the instant finish with an 8-1 victory over Shahzoda Hatamova and Turpin at No. 3 to give the Aggies a 1-0 lead.

The Mustangs came out of the break focused and raced to first set singles leads on four courts and a 5-2 lead on another.

Steinbauer evened up the contest at one-all when she cruised to a 6-4, 6-2 win over Potgieter at No. 4 singles. The junior transfer improved to 19-7 on the season, including an 8-1 record at No. 4.

Hatamova gave SMU its first lead on the afternoon when she took out Cuthbertson at No. 5, also in straight sets, 6-1, 6-3. The victory was Hatamova’s 15th on the season and her 8th at the No. 5 line.

A&M’s Frank Frank then evened the score at 2-2 with a 7-5, 7-6 (13) win against Cieplucha at the No. 2 line. Cieplucha jumped out to the early lead in the first set, but was unable to hang on and then proceeded to fall behind 5-2 in the second.

The sophomore from Poland regrouped to make a comeback of her own in the second set to force the marathon tiebreaker. Cieplucha had fought off five set points and Frank held off three set points before she took the back-and-forth 15-13 tiebreaker.

The Aggies went up 3-2 when Urbina defeated Lesniak at No. 1, 0-6, 6-3, 6-2. The loss snapped a 19-match win streak by Lesniak, who had previously defeated Urbina in straight sets in the semifinals of the ITA Texas Regionals in October.

The lead was short lived, however, as SMU closed out the victory with furious finishes at singles lines Nos. 3 and 6.

Malyarchikova won for the 19th-straight time and claimed her ninth win at No. 3 when she took out Liles, 7-5, 6-5. The junior from Belarus is the program’s current leader in career singles winning percentage, holding a 62-8 overall record during her singles career, for a winning percentage of .886.

Minutes later, Turpin, who transferred to SMU in January 2010 after playing her freshman season and the fall of her sophomore season at A&M, won the decisive point at No. 6. Turpin dropped the first set against Davidson, 6-2, but then won four consecutive games to close out a 6-1 second-set win. Turpin then won the first four games of the third set en route to a 6-2 win. 

“Turp was the last court on in three sets at the C-USA Championships, and it ended up where unfortunately she couldn’t pull it out and we didn’t win the match,” said head coach Lauren Longbotham Meisner. “I basically told her, `you’ve already gone through this; just go ahead and play and don’t worry about it.’ Of course coming back to a school you transferred from was going to be nerve-wracking. She was nervous the whole week, but she just came through. She didn’t let the nerves get to her, and she was confident with her shots. That is probably the best I’ve seen her play this year and I’m just so happy for her.”

SMU is making its school-record third consecutive and 11th overall appearance in program history in the NCAA Tournament. Saturday’s win improved the Mustang’s record to 16-11 in the all-time series against the Aggies and SMU has won two straight.

Prior to Saturday, the teams last met in 2010, and although SMU originally won the match, the ITA later ruled that neither team would be credited with a win after an A&M protest. In 2009, the teams met in the NCAA first round at the Baylor Tennis Center in Waco, Texas, and the Mustangs ended a five-match losing streak against the Aggies with a 4-1 victory. The only other time the teams met in the NCAAs was 2004 in College Station.

Additionally, the Mustangs handed the Aggies just their second loss on the season when taking the doubles point.

A win on Sunday against Florida State would put SMU in the program’s first Sweet 16 since 1987 when the team advanced to the semifinals.

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