In a match that was tighter than the 6-1 tally indicated, No. 1 Duke put away Virginia Commonwealth (3-2) Sunday evening at the Sheffield Indoor Tennis Center. Hosting Yale (3-1) Saturday and the Rams Sunday in the ITA National Team Indoor Championship qualifying rounds, the Blue Devils (4-0) used a 7-0 trouncing of the Bulldogs and a late-weekend win over No. 44 Virginia Commonwealth to advance to Madison, Wisconsin for the next stage of the competition, which involves 15 teams.
The Rams quickly dropped the first three points but made closing out the win considerably more difficult for Duke. Junior Reka Zsilinszka and senior Amanda Granson, the last two on the court, were both down at some point in their matches at Nos. 1 and 2, respectively. Both eventually fought out their wins to close out a good weekend for the Blue Devils.
“This is the first time we’ve had any kind of adversity,” head coach Jamie Ashworth said, noting that the Rams are the toughest team Duke has faced in the dual match season. “We’re going to face that through the year, so it was good to see us come through that. We were in some situations where it could have gone either way, and mentally we showed that we can be a really strong team in those types of situations.”
Playing at the No. 2 spot for the first time this year, Granson dropped the first set to the Rams’ Ana Bara, 6-3. Although she was going after all the right shots, Granson said she wasn’t closing out the points. During the break between sets, she sat down and decided to hit the restart button. Good teams and good players make adjustments, Ashworth said, and Granson made those adjustments.
Immediately, Granson turned the match around with a 6-3 second set and put an exclamation point on the 6-4 final set by serving out the last game at love.
“I decided to just keep moving my feet, go up after my serve and play the ball,” Granson said. “That win felt especially good because the girl was tough and I had to work really hard to win it.”
Duke opened the afternoon by sweeping all three doubles matches and winning the doubles point. Senior Elizabeth Plotkin and junior Monica Gorny followed that up by making quick work of their opponents at Nos. 3 and 5.
By putting up those two quick wins, the Blue Devils turned up the pressure on Virginia Commonwealth. Going up 3-0 meant that the Rams would need to win all four remaining matches to defeat Duke.
“Right now, I think our singles is at the point where, for someone to beat us at four singles is going to be a tough thing to do,” Ashworth said.
Olena Leonchuk overcame Duke freshman Mary Clayton 6-3, 6-2 at No. 6 to give the Rams their lone point of the match. One court over, junior Ellah Nze took down sophomore Alex Bara at the fourth spot, 6-2, 7-6.
Then, Granson and Zsilinszka sealed the win with hard-earned, grind-it-out victories at the top two spots.
“The team played really well this weekend,” Granson said. “This was the first test that we had all season, and I’m happy with the way we came out and played. Going forward, this is something good to build off of, and we’ll be ready for Indoors in two weeks.”
Duke will face Indiana Saturday before traveling to the National Team Indoors the following weekend.
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