Although its home crowds might be more friendly, the women's tennis team loves playing on the road, and Thursday was no exception.
The Blue Devils (22-3) had little trouble disposing of ninth-seeded N.C. State in the opening round of the ACC Tournament at Raleigh's Millbrook Tennis Exchange, blanking the Wolfpack 4-0 in an outcome that was all too expected. With one match down, coach Jamie Ashworth said his team was looking forward to a day off today before continuing its quest for ACC gold Saturday against the winner of Friday's Georgia Tech/Clemson match.
"It's huge having a day off tomorrow, because it's 90 degrees and playing three days in a row can be tough on you," Ashworth said. "So hopefully... we can take advantage of that. They'll go to class tomorrow and go through their Friday routine that they've done all year."
Winning is also something that Duke has done all year, and Thursday was no exception. Despite slow starts from each of the doubles teams, the Blue Devils quickly settled down and dominated the tournament host, N.C. State. Duke's second flight doubles
Even the top-seeded doubles team of Kelly McCain and Hillary Adams, which fell down 3-0 early to State's Katrina Gildemeister and Kristen Nicholls, came back by winning six of its next eight games, although the match was cut short because the Blue Devils had already secured the doubles point with wins at the second and third flights.
Despite the domination in all three doubles matches, Ashworth's assessment was one of satisfaction, but not over-exuberance.
"I think there were some people in our doubles that were a little nervous," Ashworth said. "At one, they didn't play great doubles because this was their first ACC tournament. At two, Julie DeRoo, same thing, didn't play great in her first ACC Tournament and at three we had another freshman who was in her first ACC Tournament, so I think once we settled down in our doubles, we played fine."
As it has done so many times this season, Duke's doubles play gave the players the momentum they needed heading into singles action. In the three matches that counted, N.C. State was only able to win a total of five games. McCain annihilated Gildemeister 6-1, 6-2 at No. 1 and Granson routed Strader 6-1, 6-0 at No. 6, but perhaps the biggest story of the day was the second-seed Johnson, who gave no breathing room to Nicholls in a 6-1, 6-2 triumph. The win for Johnson was not surprising, but the dominant fashion in which she won differed from her recent matches, where slow starts forced the intense sophomore to launch aggressive comebacks in order to win.
"Our singles players have been playing well," Ashworth said. "I'm just going to tell them to stay aggressive, keep moving, and keep working on things we've been doing all year, like first serve percentage.
"There's nothing specific that we need to work on. We just need to stay fresh and be ready for Saturday."
Paul Doran contributed to this story.
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