Narrow Defeat For Women's Tennis To Portland
3/22/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
SPOKANE, Wash. - The Gonzaga University women's tennis team suffered its first West Coast Conference setback Saturday as the University of Portland downed the Bulldogs 4-3 at the Stevens Center.
The two sides split the six singles matches but Portland claimed the critical doubles point to open the match to take the hard fought dual over the Zags (6-5, 1-1 WCC).
Katie Edwards, Melanie Yates and Alexandra Tallas each won their respective singles matches for the three Bulldog points.
Edwards, a winner of four consecutive matches, took the first singles contest at No. 2 over Sophie van den Aarssen. The 6-3, 6-2 winner gave Edwards her eighth win of the spring season.
Yates and Tallas have both won back-to-back matches. Yates dropped Saroop Dhatt 6-3, 7-5 at No. 4 and Tallas moved past Emily Gould 6-1, 4-6, 1-2 after Gould retired in the third set.
The singles defeats came at No. 1 where Kylie Peek fell 6-1, 6-2 to Maja Mladenovic; No. 3 Samantha Polayes dropped to Jelena Lazarevic 6-4, 6-4; and No. 5 Isabell Klingert going under to Tori Troesch 6-3, 7-5.
Gonzaga had it opportunity to clinch the doubles point after splitting the first two contests.
The Zags win came at No. 3 where Tallas and Edwards ousted Troesch and Dhatt 8-2. The win marks the duos sixth victory of the season, double the number of any other Gonzaga pair.
Portland's Van den Aarssen and Lazarevic then took the No. 1 match 8-7 over Peek and Polayes. The point came down to the No. 2 contest which unfortunately saw Yates and Klingert suffer a 8-6 defeat to Gould and Mladenovic.
The Zags will wait a full week before returning to the court. Gonzaga will resume WCC play Mar. 29 when they travel to Moraga to take on Saint Mary's College.
