Virginia tennis had a weekend of split results as the men's team defeated two ranked teams and the women fell to Pennsylvania Saturday.
The men's tennis team finished a five game homestand with their fifth win of the season. After handling No. 36 Alabama 6-1 on Friday, the No. 9 Cavaliers took care of No. 70 Indiana 5-2 Saturday at Boar's Head.
The biggest story of the afternoon was sophomore Marko Miklo. No. 63 Miklo came into the dual meet after losing two straight matches to unranked players he should have defeated handily. He said his confidence was so low before this afternoon that he was unsure he wanted to play, risking defeat.
"That's how it seemed the first few games, when I was down 4-0," Miklo said. "But I'm glad I played."
After falling down early, Miklo rebounded back strong to defeat Dymytro Ishtunagov 6-4, 6-2.
In a battle of intense baseline shots, No. 19 Cavalier Doug Stewart out-slugged the Hoosier's No. 61 Jakub Praibis 6-4, 6-1, after losing to him last year.
"I played pretty solid tennis," Stewart said. "I started putting more pressure on him. He started trying to play better, but he couldn't."
Freshmen Treat Huey and Somdev Devvarman clinched the doubles point with a 9-7 win at the No. 2 spot. Afterwards, Huey and Devvarman went on to score singles wins against Ryan Recht (6-3, 6-4) and Michael McCarthy (7-5, 6-1).
Indiana's two points came at No. 5 and No. 6 after the contest was already decided. Hoosiers Tom Bagnato and David Bubinicek defeated Virginia's Jarrett Chirico (6-3, 7-6) and Stephen Rozek, respectively.
Cavaliers will try to use the momentum of five straight wins when they travel to the ITA National Indoors Invitational in Chicago next week.
On the women's side, No. 51 Virginia fell just short of emulating the earlier success of their male counterparts, losing 4-3 to No. 49 Penn.
Junior Lori Stern's errant forehand and subsequent racquet bashing summed up the day for the Cavaliers in a match they had countless opportunities to win. Stern was an easy winner in her first set against Penn's Michelle Mitchell, 4-6, but hit a wall in the subsequent sets. Mitchell staged a rousing comeback to rob the Cavaliers of victory by taking the next two sets 6-2, 6-2.
Virginia looked dominant early in the match and stormed out of the gates playing great doubles. The No. 23 pair of Diana Srebrovic and Douglas Wink easily swept aside the challenge from Julia Koublitskaya and Mitchell, 8-0.
"We did get off to a very good start," Virginia coach Phil Rogers said. "We played vastly improved doubles today."
In singles, No. 67 Srebrovic looked out of sorts in the first set of her singles match against No. 84 Koublitskaya and would lose it 5-7. Srebrovic recovered from the early scare to win the next two sets 6-0, 6-1.
"I was a little too anxious coming out," Srebrovic said. "I wanted to get it over with real fast."
Virginia's Kristen James defeated Shelah Chao in straight sets 6-4, 6-2, but Dora Bechliwanis, Wink and DelPriore all lost in straight sets to the Quakers' Williams, No. 87 Rivelis and Stanislawski respectively.
The loss was Virginia's first at home and marked the second straight time the Cavaliers have lost 4-3 to Penn.
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