UNLV Claims Women's Tennis Regular-Season Title

April 18th, 2011

SAN DIEGO - When the UNLV women's tennis team dropped three of five matches and dipped in the national rankings a month ago, head coach Kevin Cory knew that losing those close matches to highly ranked opponents would ultimately help his team come conference time. That thinking proved dead on as his 12th team at the school now stands as outright regular-season Mountain West Conference champions, is ranked 43rd in the nation and is in line for another nice bump this week.

On Sunday, the Lady Rebels gutted out their third victory away from home in as many days, this time 4-3 over host San Diego State at the Aztec Tennis Center. For now, the Rebels seem to have SDSU's number, posting their 10th consecutive victory over their rival to the West and pushing their lead in the all-time series to 15-10. UNLV completed the year a perfect 8-0 in the MWC for the second time in three seasons and secured the league's regular-season crown for the third time since the conference debuted in 1999-2000 (co-champions in 2003 and outright champs in 2009, 2011). Cory's program has also won three MWC tournament championships during that time.

"This was a great day for our program," Cory said. "Our conference is very competitive this year so for us to go through without losing a match is a testament to all of the hard work the girls have put in this season. This was a tough weekend of matches but our seniors really came through. I'm really proud of our players and how they responded."

Playing in hostile territory, UNLV won its eighth straight match to improve to 19-4 while SDSU fell to 15-9 and 6-2 in the league. The Lady Rebels opened the morning by taking two of three doubles matches for one team point - but just barely. Lucia Batta and Anna Maskaljun won 8-2 over Julia Wais and Alicia Aguilar on court two but, after SDSU won at the top of the lineup, UNLV needed a huge rally at No. 3 to take the lead. The senior duo of Jana Albers and Adrienn Hidvegi would dig itself out of a 7-2 hole by winning seven consecutive points and take the key match 9-7 over Julia Trunk and Emma Cioffi.

As expected, singles play was a battle as half of the matches went to three sets.

Maskaljun, per usual, was done first as she tied Katarina Malec's 11-year-old school record with her 19th consecutive victory, 6-2, 6-1 over Olivia Colman at No. 6. Maskaljun improved her senior singles record to 26-4 overall and an eye-popping 22-1 in dual matches. In fact, the native of Estonia has not lost a match since January and has not dropped even as much as a set since February 20.

Nives Pavlovic soon made it 3-0 with a 6-4, 6-4 win at No. 3 over Aguilar before the hosts got on the board with two wins. Albers then turned in her second rally of the day, coming back from a 5-2 score in the deciding set to clinch it for the Rebels on court five over Sierra Ellison, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 (7-5).

"San Diego State is such a strong program and it seems like we go 4-3 every year with them. We lost a couple of close ones to really good teams earlier in the season and I think that helped us finish today with a victory."

Having earned the top seed in the MWC championship tournament, which gets underway April 27 in Fort Collins, Colo., UNLV now sets its sight on becoming the first women's tennis team in school history to win both the conference's regular-season and tourney titles in the same season.

Article Courtesy of The MWC