For the first time in almost four years, the No. 1 North Carolina women’s tennis team (23-1, 12-1) lost a regular season dual match on Friday, falling 5-2 to No. 9 Duke (16-3, 11-2) in Durham.
What happened?
Both teams played highly competitive tennis in all three doubles matches, but the Blue Devils took the point 2-1.
The nation’s top-ranked duo of UNC’s Fiona Crawley and Elizabeth Scotty won 6-2 against Duke’s No. 38 combo of Karolina Berankova and Georgia Drummy.
The other two, however, struggled, as No. 26 Alle Sanford and Cameron Morra lost 6-3 to No. 55 Chloe Beck and Ellie Coleman and the Carson Tanguilig-Reilly Tran duo lost 6-3 to Eliza Omirou and Margaryta Bilokin.
In the more important singles matches, UNC senior No. 4 Morra fell behind 6-1 and rolled her left ankle on the final point of the seventh and final set. She tried to fight back with an obvious limp, but to no avail, and she fell 6-1, 6-4.
The #2 singles match saw UNC’s No. 17 Scotty take on Duke’s No. 21 Drummy. Scotty fell 6-4 in the first set but battled back to take the second, 6-2. Drummy sealed the deal, though, in the final frame and won 7-5.
Sophomore Reilly Tran, ranked No. 24 in the country, provided one of the two UNC victories in the number three singles match. She took down No. 122 Emma Jackson in three sets – 6-2, 3-6, 5-1 – in a contest that got called when Crawley lost in the next part of the ladder.
Another UNC win came from first-year Carson Tanguilig, the No. 48 singles player in the nation, in the fifth singles match. She fell in the first set against Bilokin but came back to win sets two and three by a score of 6-1.
