IU falls against Penn State, beats Ohio State at home

Coming off the heels of its win against No. 2 Duke, the No. 38 IU women’s tennis team continued Big Ten action by playing host to No. 37 Penn State and No. 53 Ohio State during the weekend.

The Hoosiers lost to the Nittany Lions by a 4-3 margin on Friday, but defeated the Buckeyes 5-2 on Sunday.

In Friday evening’s match against Penn State, IU tested three new doubles tandems, and it paid off in the No. 3 doubles match. Sophomores Shannon Murdy and Carolyn Chupa defeated Sarah Henderson and Jacqueline Zuhse 8-1.

“We’ve been losing the doubles point for the last few matches, so I think the coaches wanted to switch up the teams to see if we could get ahead and get the doubles point,” Chupa said. “We switched it on Friday and then we switched it again today because it didn’t really work out on Friday.”

In the No. 1 match, No. 57 Petra Januskova and Chelsea Utting topped IU seniors Leslie Hureau and Jithmie Jayawickrema 8-4.

Penn State took a 1-0 lead by winning the No. 2 doubles match.

The Hoosiers tied the match when sophomore Alecia Kauss bested Devan McCluskey 6-0, 6-2 in the No. 4 singles match.

Penn State responded in the No. 2 spot when Utting topped sophomore Katie Klyczek 6-4, 6-4.

IU won the No. 3 and No. 5 singles matches in consecutive sets to take a 3-2 advantage.

Penn State’s Marie-Frederique Bedard took the No. 6 singles match from Murdy with a 7-6, 6-2 victory.

With the dual match tied at three points apiece, the No. 1 singles match was the deciding factor to break the tie. Hureau won the first set 7-6 but No. 41 Januskova came from behind to win the next two 6-4 and 7-6 (7-5) in a tiebreaker.

It was IU’s fourth 4-3 loss of the season.

“It’s the doubles point (that is the key to winning 4-3 matches) because basically all of the matches that we lost 4-3, we lost the doubles point,” junior Sophie Garre said.

IU jumped out to a 1-0 lead against Ohio State by winning the doubles point.

“Today it really helped because we’re up 4-0 but all of the matches that are still going on are really close,” Garre said after the Hoosiers had secured the win by winning the first four points of the match. “We are really happy that we won the doubles point.”

In the No. 1 match, Hureau and Chupa defeated Kelsey Dieters and Grâinne O’Neill 8-4 when O’Neill couldn’t handle Chupa’s return in the final point.

Minutes later, Kauss and Murdy topped Kara Cecil and Noelle Malley 8-4 after Malley double faulted in the final game.

In the No. 3 doubles match, Fidan Manashirova and Gabby Steele bested Garre and Klyczek 9-8 (6-4), but it was too little, too late for the Buckeyes as the Hoosiers were in control of the match from the start.

Chupa kept IU rolling by quickly defeating Cecil 6-0, 6-2 in the No. 3 singles match.
 
“I think after winning the doubles point we had a lot of energy going into singles, so that definitely carried us through the first sets of the match,” she said.

Garre gave IU a 3-0 lead when her serve proved too much for O’Neill in a straight-sets win at the No. 5 position.

Klyczek and Jayawickrema won the No. 2 and No. 6 singles matches, respectively, to increase IU’s lead to five points.

Ohio State won the No. 1 and No. 4 singles matches in consecutive sets to bring IU’s final margin of victory to 5-2. It was IU’s first win in the Big Ten and the Hoosiers’ third victory against a ranked opponent.

“It feels pretty good,” Garre said.

“We feel a little relieved,” Chupa said.

IU is now 12-5 (1-2) and the Hoosiers are tied for sixth in the Big Ten.

“We were confident in the way we were playing in the past few matches and when we beat Duke,” Garre said. “We’ve been playing well in singles so we feel pretty confident in the way that we’re playing right now.”