It took over four hours, a handful of tiebreaks and heartbreaks, but the women’s tennis NCAA Championships has its final two contenders.

No. 3 Texas A&M topped No. 7 UCLA 4-3, while No. 12 Stanford upset the overall No. 1 seed Florida by the same margin.

The matchup between the Cardinal and Gators featured reigning champions from every division of competition. Florida had won the past two team championships while Stanford’s Nicole Gibbs is the defending singles champion as well as the being a part of the doubles team with Mallory Burdette that took home the trophy in 2012.

The Cardinal set the tone early, right from the doubles point. Stanford’s strong doubles pairs of No. 8 Kristie Ahn and Gibbs as well as No. 28 Stacey Tan and Ellen Tsay each earned victories by an 8-3 spread. Gibbs and Ahn ripped off five of the last six games to turn a 3-2 lead into the 8-3 victory amid extremely windy conditions at the Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex on Monday.

In individual play, the heavyweight matchup was at No. 1 singles, which featured the defending singles champion in Gibbs and the current No. 1 ranked player Lauren Embree. The match itself didn’t quite live up to the hype, however, as Gibbs cruised to a 6-0, 6-1 victory.

“I’m kind of still in shock, I wasn’t expecting that easy of a victory,” Gibbs said. “Lauren Embree was at no means at her best today and if we played again, I’m sure it wouldn’t be the same result.”

Embree looked like she was perhaps picking up some momentum early in the second set after winning a game and quickly producing a 40-0 lead right after. But, Gibbs reeled off six consecutive points to take the game and she wouldn’t lose another game during the whole match.

Both teams traded singles wins and the score was knotted at 3-3 when all eyes turned to the third court matchup of Stanford’s Krista Hardebeck and Florida’s Alexandra Cercone. The Gators junior looked to be in control by leaping out to a 4-0 lead in the first set and again held a 5-2 advantage in the second set. Yet, both times, Hardebeck stormed back. Cercone would eventually take the first set via a 7-6 tiebreaker but couldn’t close out the match in the second set and lost in a 7-6 breaker.

The hard fought sets took their toll on Cercone, as she began cramping in the third set and lost 6-3 to clinch the victory for Stanford.

“When I saw her getting medical treatment and holding her leg, I knew I was more physically into it than her,” the freshman Hardebeck said. “We’ve been doing really difficult training this quarter. We’ve really stepped it up.”

On the opposite courts, UCLA and Texas A&M went through a grueling match that again came down to a freshman on the final court to win it.

The Aggies’ Ines Deheza held off UCLA’s Chanelle Van Nguyen despite squandering multiple match points in the second set. Deheza would lose the second set in a tiebreaker and found herself down 4-2 in the third set despite winning the first two games.

“I’ve seen a lot in my playing and coaching career, but this was incredible,” Texas A&M head coach Howard Joffe said. “It was kind of cruel and unusual way for the match to end. (Van Nguyen) fought like an animal.”

The Aggies were down 3-1 after dropping the doubles point but quickly picked up victories at No. 6 and No. 3 singles to knot up the overall score. A&M would again look out of life when Deheza went down 4-2 in the third set after Van Nguyen won her fourth consecutive game. With the score 40-0 against her, Deheza, a first-semester freshman, reeled off 11 consecutive points over two games to tie the score and from there, she would finish the last two games for the victory.

“If I was Sigmund Freud I could guess what got her back in the match,” Joffe joked. “I guess in sports when you think you’re out of it, you relax and you’re able to hit your shots again.”

While Stanford has won 16 national championships, it will be the Aggies’ first crack at the trophy. The match begins at 5 p.m. at the Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex. While history seems to side with the Cardinal, Joffe wasn’t willing to buy into the hype of the match.

“None of the conjecture or hype is worth a damn thing,” he said. “It’s a performance-based sport.”  

Stephen can be reached at [email protected] and @steve_bourbon.