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April 20, 2007 > Sports > Owls end regular season with win

Owls end regular season with win

By Casey Michel | Thresher Editorial Staff

Every rare once in a while, miracles happen. But what is even rarer is a No. 7 seed knocking off all three top seeds in a conference tournament to take a league title. Which is exactly what the 2006 women’s tennis team did nearly twelve months ago.

As the women’s tennis team prepares for next weekend’s C-USA tournament in Tulsa, Okla., they can look back at how last year’s squad made that improbable run to the conference championship. Starting with an opening-round throttling of tenth-seeded University of Southern Mississippi, seventh-seeded Rice downed the top three seeds in the tournament to grab the title.

This year, the Owls came into the tournament seeded tenth of eleven teams. Their first test lay with the seventh-seeded University of Houston, which Rice met yesterday at 2 p.m. The last time these two squads faced was Rice’s 4-1 upset of the Cougars in last year’s C-USA semifinals.

Head coach Roger White said the similarities between this and last year’s squad are obvious. But this time around, the Owls will go into this weekend with only one thing on their mind: defense of their title.

“We’re in a very similar situation right now,” White said. “We’re going to look at the tournament as ‘this is our title, we own it, and nobody’s taking it from us.’”

If the Owls win they will move on to meet No. 52 SMU today at 2 p.m. The semifinals of Rice’s bracket are held tomorrow at the same time, and the championship match will take place at 10 a.m. on Sunday.

White said the conference field is wide open, but that his team is the most prepared of the bunch.

“[C-USA] is a nice conference in regards to there being a lack of powerhouses, so we can afford to play a really tough [regular season] schedule to give us the necessary experience,” White said. “It’s very deceptive because of the way tennis works. If you’re going after the top teams [in the regular season], you don’t get any credit for playing them close. There are teams like UAB, which play a lot of minor Division I schools, and perform extremely well plus maybe get a better seeding. But in reality, they’re not prepared for the level of competition.”

But before the Owls could focus on the upcoming tournament, they had to get through No. 6 Abilene Christian University last Friday, the first Division II opponent they have faced all year. Instead of playing in front of a home crowd at Jake Hess Tennis Stadium, rain, which had already canceled an earlier match against No. 36 Texas Christian University, moved the play indoors to Chancellor’s Family Center in Houston. White said the indoor courts gave Abilene Christian an advantage.

“The faster courts suited Abilene’s play a bit more than we would have [liked],” White said. “[The Rice women] played with a lot of adversity — the tough timing, indoor on fast courts, seemingly everything working to our disadvantage. That Friday the 13th thing was really kicking in.”

In addition to faster courts, the Owls also had to battle through injuries, as both junior Christine Dao and freshman Rebecca Lin were sidelined with neck ailments. Their absence was most tangible in doubles, where the Wildcats swept the Owls in all three positions.

However, Rice quickly regained its footing and dominated the beginning of singles. Junior Tiffany Lee got things going with an easy straight-set win over 17th-ranked Irene Squilliaci at No. 2, evening up the team score. At the top of the ladder, freshman Julie Chao continued her dominance with a resounding 7-5, 6-1 victory against No. 20 Aina Rafolomanantsiatosika to put the Owls in the lead for good. Sophomore Dominique Karas padded the lead with a sweep at No. 3, and fellow sophomore Emily Braid notched a win at No. 5 to clinch Rice’s victory to put the Owls’ final record at 6-14.

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