Lady Vols a few points short for SEC tennis title

One point here, one point there.

Tennessee women's tennis coach Mike Patrick says the Lady Vols are that close to beating some of the top teams in college tennis, and he saw it come that close again Saturday afternoon.

The No. 13-ranked Lady Vols lost four tight matches in a 5-2 loss to No. 2 Georgia in an SEC match at the UT Varsity Courts.

"We battled. We've been battling," Patrick said. "We've had three tough matches this year, the same kind of thing where in the clutch on big points we just haven't executed, and that's a sign of a little bit of inexperience and just not believing."

UT (15-5, 8-3 SEC) will be seeded third in the SEC tournament, which starts Thursday in Fayetteville, Ark. The Lady Vols will have a first-round bye and won’t play until Friday against No. 6 seed South Carolina or 11th seed Kentucky.

Georgia (20-2, 10-1) won the regular-season title and No. 1 seed.

"We've got a lot of strong teams in the conference," Patrick said. "We need to go out and play just like we played today except a little smarter."

Georgia took a 1-0 lead in Saturday's match by winning two of the three doubles. UT's Jennifer Meredith and Maria Sorbello, playing No. 3 doubles, kept the Lady Vols' chances of winning the doubles point going with a 9-7 victory at No. 3 doubles.

The point came down to the No. 2 doubles with UT's Rosalia Alda and Zsofia Zubor playing Monika Dancevic and Yvette Hyndman.

Alda and Zubor had a 7-4 lead in the pro set, but Georgia's team rallied to force a tiebreaker. Georgia clinched the doubles point when Dancevic and Hyndman won the tiebreaker, 7-5.

Patrick said losing the doubles point hurt.

"It's tough," he said. "We played a great, experienced team and we needed to win that. We have a lot of good athletes, and we had a chance to win it and we got a little tight. (Georgia is) good, but we had our chances to win and we just didn't execute in what we needed to do."

Georgia took a 2-0 lead when No. 10 Chelsey Gullickson beat No. 48 Caitlin Whoriskey 6-3, 6-2 at No. 1 singles.

UT freshman Natalie Pluskota posted a 6-3, 6-4 victory over No. 45 Hyndman at No. 2 singles. Pluskota, from Newnan, Ga., then watched as the Lady Vols tried to pull off the upset.

"It's so nerve-wracking watching," Pluskota said. "It's so much easier to play. Watching is so nerve-wracking because you want it so bad."

Georgia's Nadja Gilchrist won at No. 3 singles for a 3-1 lead and UT got within 3-2 when Sorbello beat Cameron Ellis 6-4, 6-4 at No. 6 singles.

That left the match hinging on Nos. 4 and 5 singles, and Georgia won both at almost the same time. No. 73 Dancevic beat Meredith 7-6 (1), 7-6 (6) at No. 4 and Naoko Ueshima beat Alda 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 at No. 5.

"I know my team fought hard today and came up a little short," Pluskota said, "but we'll get 'em back next week."