It was a tale of two sets for the Illinois women’s tennis doubles team of Melissa Kopinski and Rachael White.

Facing the No. 29 doubles pairing of Jaklin Alawi and Dominika Kanakova from South Carolina, the Illini were able to pull out a win in the first round of the NCAA doubles tournament Thursday afternoon at the Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex.

Kopinski and White cruised to a 6-0 victory in the first set but were challenged in the second before taking the set 7-6 (5) in a tiebreaker.

“It was night and day out there but when the pressure was on, those girls responded,” head coach Michelle Dasso said. “Particularly in those big points in the tiebreaker of the second set. We had some nerve-wracking second serves but we made them.”

The Illini came out with a lot of energy on their home court and swept the entire first set without much resistance. Playing through windy and temperatures in the 50s, the Gamecocks didn’t look comfortable in the first set and in turn, had a high amount of unforced errors. The closest Illinois got to losing a game was being down 40-15 in the fifth game of the set before coming back and winning the game with four consecutive points.

“We came out more ready to play than they did,” White said. “We were a little more ready to deal with the wind.”

The second set would be neck and neck through the entire duration. Each pair went back and forth winning their service opportunities until Illinois came through with a break point late in the set to go up 5-3. With White due to serve, South Carolina clawed back with a break of its own to pull to 5-4 and won the next two games consecutively to push the score to 6-5 in favor of the Gamecocks.

White and Kopinski would face set point but battled back to deuce and South Carolina committed a double fault to tie the set at six games each.

In the tiebreaker, the Illini fell behind 3-1 before rattling off three consecutive points and six of the last eight to take the match. A Kopinski ace clinched the match, eliciting a roar from the contingent of Illinois fans behind court one.

Kopinski, especially, was very active closer to the net during volleys and put away handful of tough finishers, usually followed by an emphatic yell of “Let’s go!”

“We’ve worked a little bit on her positioning, which allows her to get more balls,” Dasso said. “We want her to show that kind of spirit a little bit more on the court.”

White and Kopinski will face Whitney Ritchie and Hermon Brhane from Oklahoma on Friday.

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