Northwestern University Athletics
Northwestern
NCAA Championships
Mosolova Reaches Round of 16 in NCAA Singles Championship
5/27/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
May 27, 2010
NCAA Singles and Doubles Championships
Site: Athens, Ga. (Dan Magill Tennis Center)
Next NU Event: NCAA Singles Championships Round of 16 - Fri., May 28
#13 Maria Mosolova (NU) vs. #2 Jana Juricova (CAL), 10 a.m. CT
Updated Bracket -- Live Stats -- Live Video
NCAA Singles Championship bracket 
ATHENS, Ga. -- In the heat of a 90-degree day on the campus of the University of Georgia, Northwestern junior Maria Mosolova outlasted 54th-ranked Katrina Tsang of North Carolina, 6-0, 7-6 (4), to advance to the round of 16 at the NCAA Singles Championship Thursday and secure the third All-American honor of her career. NU's other remaining individuals at the event, Samantha Murray and the doubles team of Lauren Lui and Elena Chernyakova, fell in the round of 32.
On Friday, Mosolova will face California's second-ranked Jana Juricova at 10 a.m. CT in search of her third trip to the NCAA quarterfinals.
Northwestern's day opened with Murray's match against the draw's No. 1 seed in Georgia Tech's Irina Falconi, who came into Thursday with a 38-2 record and having not lost a match since Feb. 13. But none of that mattered early on as Murray got off to an auspicious start, taking a 3-1 lead with a nice break of serve. Two games later, however, Falconi was back on serve and tied at three before going on to take the set 6-3.
Murray responded by once again seizing a 3-1 advantage in the second set. With Falconi serving, Murray won back-to-back points with perfect lobs over the head of a drawn in Falconi en route to winning the game to go up 4-1. But momentum shifted once again to the Yellow Jacket, who cut down on her unforced errors in climbing all the way back to tie things at four with a break of serve. She continued to mix up her shots down the stretch and came away with a 6-4 second-set win.
Murray, one of only three NU players to qualify for the NCAA Singles Championships all four years of her career, concludes her season with a mark of 29-12 and an incredible college career with a record of 133-45 (.747 winning percentage). She also was dominant in Big Ten play, posting a 33-4 lifetime record, earning All-Big Ten recognition four times and taking home the 2007 conference Freshman of the Year Award.
Following Murray it was Mosolova's turn to take to the courts with Tsang, against whom she had gone 2-0 in two previous meetings this season. Mosolova was on top of her game in the first set, which she won 6-0, before Tsang stepped up to Mosolova's level in the second and took a 3-1 lead. Tsang later led 5-2, but Mosolova rallied to win three consecutive games to get back to even at five.
With their respective seasons on the line, Mosolova and Tsang pushed the second set to a tiebreaker, where the NU junior prevailed 7-4 to win the match 6-0, 7-6 (4), and claim her 32nd singles win this season.
At the same time Mosolova was battling Tsang, Northwestern's doubles duo of Lauren Lui and Elena Chernyakova were in a back-and-forth match with the Texas Christian pairing of Kayla Duncan and Katariina Tuohimaa in the doubles championship, which shifts from a regular eight-game pro-set to a standard best-of-three sets format. Neither team was able to gain much footing throughout the first set but in the end it was TCU edging NU in a tiebreak to win 7-6 and go up a set.
Things were no different early in the second as the teams were tied at two through four games. But Duncan and Tuohimaa found their groove from there, winning the last four games to claim the match 7-6, 6-2.
Like Murray, Lui puts the finishing touches on a career during which she helped Northwestern achieve a litany of program-firsts. Individually, Lui was a three-time qualifier for the NCAA Doubles Championship and also reached the field of the NCAA Singles tournament in 2008, when she was 32-9 in singles and 39-9 in doubles. Lui became a doubles All-American in 2009 when she and Georgia Rose were among the final eight teams in the nation still playing.
NCAA Championships Results -- Thursday, May 27
#1 Irina Falconi (GT) def. #41 Samantha Murray (NU), 6-3, 6-4
#13 Maria Mosolova (NU) def. #54 Katrina Tsang (UNC), 6-0, 7-6 (4)
#46 Duncan/Tuohimaa (TCU) def. #24 Chernyakova/Lui (NU), 7-6, 6-2
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