Syracuse tennis improves to 8-0, beating Florida State

The simultaneous third doubles became more critical for both teams longing to get the first team point, which foreshadowed the most intense round in the doubles. Polina Kozyreva and Miyuka Kimoto tried their best to disrupt the pace of Florida State’s Vic Allen and Olympe Lancelot by giving lob-shot responses, nice net plays at the front and keeping hustling through unforced errors. They played flexibly and slickly coped with the Seminoles’ height advantage, forcing to the tiebreaker and terminating it finally 7-6.

“Miyuka (Kimoto) did a tremendous job at poaching and being aggressive, and Polina (Kozyreva) returned extremely well and set her up to finish points,” Syracuse head coach Younes Limam said. “The doubles point was huge for us. We were very pleased with how we started and finished the doubles overall.”

Turning to the singles, which was the most intense part of the day, Erman was picked to be the first of the singles ladder to combat Arkadianou. As Erman failed to set the pace in previous sets, she suffered the setback of forced errors and got exhausted and frustrated when losing long rallies. Erman dropped the singles 3-6 and 2-6.

Kimoto was swept by Vic Allen (2-6, 1-6) as the No. 2 singles. She also struggled in pulling out of consecutive unforced errors, being dominated by Allen with an apparent height and strength disparity. The Seminoles temporarily obtained two points to take the lead when Erman and Kimoto faded.

The Orange tied the game after Kozyreva won two modest straight sets over Mila Saric. Kozyreva’s aggressive plays enabled Saric to lose points by having the unforced-error difficulty, sweeping 6-3 and 6-2 with the same ease.

The other three games had the highest toughness as all players pushed the game to the third set. No. 6 singles Fonte used cutting to survive in every long rally, setting the tone later for the first set 7-5 against Bissett. But, she tarnished immediately on the court and lost two sets 2-6 and 3-6.

Fonte’s loss conveyed much pressure to Ito and Kanapatskaya. Ito represented her persistence by agile moving and decent net plays, and took the first set against Lancelot. After missing the second set, she overcame her unforced errors and maintained the one-game-surpassing.

While Kanapatskaya burst out at the edge of the cliff in the next court, reversing the game back to her control by stealing a win of the second set in the tiebreaker. Kanapatskaya played confidently afterward in the final set, and both Syracuse singles sealed the victory almost simultaneously.

Syracuse will return to Drumlin Country Club and battle No. 23 University of Miami, one of the biggest opponents and the third-ranked team that Syracuse will face on Sunday. The most important thing before the game, Limam said, is to get recovery in only one day off.