No. 15 Northwestern overpowers Hoosiers

The IU women’s tennis team lost 6-1 Saturday at No. 15 Northwestern.

The Wildcats (15-6, 7-0) stayed perfect in conference play, and the Hoosiers (12-9, 2-6) remained winless in their six Big Ten road matches.

IU junior Evgeniya Vertesheva scored the lone singles win for the Hoosiers. Vertesheva, No. 114 in the national singles rankings, defeated No. 65 Belinda Niu 6-0, 4-6, 6-4.
It was Vertesheva’s fourth consecutive victory and improved her Big Ten singles record to 6-2.

“She is playing really solid,” IU coach Lin Loring said. “She had a couple losses early in the conference that she probably shouldn’t have had. But she’s just playing good tennis and competing really well. It was a really good win for her.”

The Hoosiers lost the other five singles matches in straight sets, but Loring was pleased with the way his team competed. The teams split the first two doubles matches and the doubles point came down to a tight match at No. 3 doubles.

Loring said a controversial overrule by the chair umpire took away what would have been a 7-5 lead for IU’s duo of Katya Zapadalova and Sophie Garre. After the call went Northwestern’s way, the Wildcats took that game and the next two to close out Zapadalova and Garre 8-6.

“I thought overall we did a good job,” Loring said. “You can’t get much closer than that in the doubles and Katya and Leslie (Hureau) were close to splitting (sets) in their singles matches, so I thought we competed pretty well.”