While the NCAA tournament will be coming to the Atkins Tennis Center on May 16, the Illinois women’s tennis team will be there only as spectators.
The NCAA had its bracket reveal show Tuesday afternoon and the Illini (14-11, 6-5 Big Ten) were left out, despite winning eight of their last 11 matches.
“It’s heartbreaking,” head coach Michelle Dasso said. “I think we missed it by one to three teams at most.”
Undermining the Illini’s tournament bid were upsets in the conference tournaments from smaller conferences. Regular season Big Sky champion UC-Irvine was upset by Long Beach State in the tournament finale, taking away a potential at-large bid. Based on the latest rankings, the last at-large team in the field was San Diego State, which sits four spots ahead of the Illini at No. 39.
The Big Ten will be represented by regular season conference co-champions Michigan and Nebraska, as well as Northwestern, Purdue and Indiana. The Illini were a combined 1-5 against those teams, including two losses against Purdue in six days that sealed their fate.
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“I feel like if we could have gotten one of those Purdue matches, we would have been in for sure,” Dasso said. “It’s tough not making it the year we’re hosting.”
There is still hope for some Illini to make a postseason appearance. The individual bracket will be announced tomorrow and the doubles pairing of Melissa Kopinski and Rachael White came in at No. 25 in the latest rankings, but lost to the No. 27 duo of Krisztina Kapitany and Mara Schmidt in their match against Purdue on Friday.
The top-32 pairings will be selected for postseason play, so once again the Illini will be on the bubble.
Stephen can be reached at [email protected] and @steve_bourbon.
