Canes Primed to Take on a Pair of Top-10 Opponents
April 5, 2012
CORAL GABLES Fla.- In its final regular season road trip, the No. 7 University of Miami women’s tennis team will head to North Carolina this Friday and Saturday to take on both No. 3 Duke and No. 8 UNC.
Miami, Duke, and UNC all enter the weekend undefeated in the ACC play. With only four matches left in the regular season, these upcoming matches are a test the Hurricanes look forward to heading into the ACC tournament, which begins in two weeks.
“Duke-UNC is a big weekend, but I think we’ve got a lot of momentum going up there,” said Miami Head Coach Paige Yaroshuk-Tews on having her team prepared for this weekend’s marquee matchups. “It’s not always easy playing on the road, but we’re just focusing on doing what we’ve been doing all year, which is trying to play tennis on our terms, trying to play matches on our terms and understanding that things don’t need to change based on rankings.”
The Blue Devils are 17-2 this spring, with thirteen of those wins coming over ranked opponents. All six of Duke’s singles players and all three of their doubles teams are currently ranked by the ITA. Freshman phenom Beatrice Capra headlines the roster at No. 2 in the country and their highest-ranked doubles team of Capra and Rachel Kahan standing at No. 25, one spot behind Liat Zimmerman and Melissa Bolivar at No. 24.
The Blue Devils hold a 11-10 edge in the all time series against the Canes.
UNC improved to 16-4 this season with its most recent 5-2 route of the Clemson Tigers, a team that the Hurricanes also defeated by the same score earlier in the season. The Tar Heels have won their last 11straight matches, partly due to the dominant performances put forth by their No. 4 ranked doubles tandem of Shinnan Featherston and Lauren McHale. At the top of the singles roster is a pair of juniors, Zoe De Bruycker and Lauren McHale who are currently ranked 30th and 33rd respectively.
The Canes are 13-3 all-time against North Carolina.
“We’re going to go up there and we’re going to try to keep the momentum going and play the way that we’ve been playing all season and that’s playing to win and playing to our strengths,” commented Yaroshuk-Tews.
The Canes are set to take on Duke at 3 p.m. tomorrow at Ambler Tennis Stadium in Durham and will then make the trip to Chapel Hill for an 11 a.m. start against UNC at the Cone-Kenfield Tennis Center.
