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The Daily Tar Heel

Tar Heels take home 12th straight win

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Junior Lauren McHale jumps to return a shot against her Miami opponent on Saturday. McHale won her doubles match in UNC’s 4-3 victory.

Easter weekend brought long-awaited redemption for the No. 8 North Carolina women’s tennis team in its convincing 4-0 win against No. 31 Florida State and a close, emotional upset in a 4-3 victory against No. 7 Miami.

Against FSU, the Tar Heels were able to carry the energy from sweeping the doubles matches into some tough singles matches.

Tessa Lyons and Lauren McHale were both matched against girls that had taken them down at least once last year, but this year, they wanted a different outcome.

“I played that girl last year twice, so I knew what to expect, but I really wanted it a lot, I think, just because of last year,” Lyons said.

Despite a long and drawn-out match — with one of the games lasting more than 20 minutes — Lyons came out with a win in straight sets, 6-3, 6-3.

McHale also emerged victorious in her match against Ruth Seaborne, who beat McHale last year and was forced to retire this time due to injury after McHale went up 4-1 in the second set.

After Lyons’ victory put the Tar Heels up 4-0, the match was called and the remaining three singles matches, which were going into third sets, remained unfinished.

Coach Brian Kalbas said the decision to stop when either of the teams got to four points was one the two teams had reached before the start of the match.

“I was not opposed to it because we’ve played a lot of tennis so far this year, and if we could save ourselves another hour going into tomorrow, it can only help us,” he said.

That proved to be a sound call, because the Hurricanes, whom the Tar Heels described as feisty, gave UNC a spirited and tough match on Saturday.

Both teams started out strong in doubles, with the Tar Heels managing two come-from-behind victories to secure the point. UNC used that late surge to carry momentum into the singles matches.

“(Winning the doubles point) definitely helps with momentum going into singles, especially in these big close matches where they have really good singles players as well,” Shinann Featherston said.

UNC matched Miami’s first two singles wins with victories of its own. With the remaining two matches in close third sets and the score at 3-2, the match was still up for grabs.

“You’ve got a team ranked seventh and a team ranked eighth and both teams are very competitive and want to win, so there’s a lot of emotion,” Kalbas said.

“It wasn’t ugly, but there was a lot of questioning of calls and some overrules. But in any big, competitive match, that’s going to happen.”

UNC split the matches with Gina Suarez-Malaguti, rallying from a set down to win (4-6, 6-3, 6-2), and Zoe De Bruycker lost her second and third sets to Miami’s Lina Lileikite (2-6, 6-3, 6-4).

But Malaguti’s win was enough to put the Tar Heels over the edge and clinch the match, 4-3.

After its win against Miami, UNC is now tied for first in the conference with Duke, whom it plays in Durham on Thursday.

Featherston said that the Tar Heels are confident and excited to finish out the season, and while they know that there’s a bull’s-eye on their backs, they won’t give up.

“Being the defending champions of the ACC, we know that we’re a target team and people are looking to beat us,” she said. “But we’re just using that as motivation to come out strong.”

Contact the Sports Editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.

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