Fresh off an upset victory over No. 23 UCF, Illinois women’s tennis returned home for a match against Ole Miss, who had earned a 4-1 win over Purdue just two days prior. For the second time this season, the Illini did not drop a single match and beat the Rebels 4-0.
Outside factors forced head coach Evan Clark to get a bit creative when setting his lineup as senior Kate Duong was dealing with an injury and junior Kida Ferrari was out with illness. This led to pairings of fifth year Josie Frazier and sophomore McKenna Schaefbauer on court one, junior Megan Heuser and freshman Alice Xu on court two and junior Kasia Treiber and sophomore Violeta Martinez on court three.
The Illini were in good shape to take the doubles point from the beginning, jumping out to 5-1 and 5-0 leads on courts two and three respectively. It was an especially dominant performance from Treiber and Martinez, who won their fifth game after trailing 40-0. Both groups lost a bit of footing from there, but their leads were far too great for the Rebels to overcome. A pair of 6-3 wins meant Illinois entered singles with a 1-0 lead while Frazier and Schaefbauer’s match went unfinished (5-4).
Duong was acting similarly to Clark and associate head coach Jacob Eddins during doubles, offering guidance and strategy to her teammates who were on the court. Clark shared that this was an intentional way to have Duong stay involved while injured and it continued throughout singles as well.
“She’s got a good tennis mind,” said Clark. “(She) obviously plays at a high level so we felt really comfortable putting her out there, acting as a third coach. The girls love having her out there and she’s doing a great job, so we appreciate that even though she’s not on the court and playing, she’s helping us in that way.”
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Courts one through six were occupied by Heuser, Martinez, Treiber, Schaefbauer, Frazier and Xu from top to bottom.
The first sets were ones to forget for the Illini, as they won on just two courts. Treiber was the first to finish, falling 6-1 before Schaefbauer flipped that count on her opponent. Two more losses were partly remedied by Heuser who capitalized on an early 5-2 lead and entered the second set on top (6-4). Heuser flew through her opponent in the second set to move the Illini’s lead to 2-0, winning five straight games after splitting the first two (6-4, 6-1).
After winning just one game in the first set and trailing 5-3 in the second, Treiber rallied strongly to force a third set (7-5). Keeping with the trend of rattling off several consecutive games, Xu broke a 3-3 tie with a commanding three game win streak to also force a third set.
Soon after, Schaefbauer gave Illinois its third point and moved it one match away from victory. While trailing 30-40 in the 12th game and leading 6-5, the Illinois native ripped out two straight points to avoid a tiebreaker and end the match (6-1, 7-5).
Courts two and five featured the two most competitive matches of the afternoon and were still in their second sets when Treiber’s was coming down to the wire. As Martinez and Frazier fought to avoid defeat, Treiber transitioned from inching towards victory into an all out sprint. The dam broke when Ole Miss cut her lead to 3-2, after which Treiber cruised into an uncontested victory (1-6, 7-5, 6-2).
Treiber’s match moved Illinois to a 4-0 win overall, which moved its record to 5-2 on the season. Heuser now sits an a dominant 5-1 record on court one.
“The Ole Miss coach asked me ‘How did we not win one of those matches?’ and I said ‘That’s a great question,’” Clark said . “It was a great job by them flipping the matches, especially at (court) three and (court) five. After losing the first sets pretty easily I thought we would have a really tough day. We won two first sets and to win 4-0 … it’s just credit to our girls for figuring it out and finding a way.”
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