©Colette Lewis 2008--
Tulsa, OK--
If you need someone to clinch your upset, you could do worse than two NCAA champions. Baylor and California both had their battle-tested veterans on the court for that final point, the one that put their schools in the Division I semifinals on Monday.
Cal's Susie Babos, the NCAA champion in 2006, fought back from a set down to defeat Maria Mosolova of Northwestern 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 to give the No. 8 Bears a 4-2 win over the top seeded Wildcats on a hot, but still remarkably calm, afternoon at the Michael Case Tennis Center.
Baylors's Zuzana Zemenova, the 2005 NCAA champion, had a slightly easier time, taking out Stanford's Hilary Barte 6-4, 6-2 to give the fifth seeded Bears a 4-1 win over the fourth seeded Cardinal.
Baylor took the doubles point at No. 2 when Taylor Ormond and Jelena Stanivuk won the final five games from Whitney Deason and Jessica Nguyen to post the 9-7 win for the Bears.
Baylor took the first set in four of the six singles, and only Lindsay Burdette's win over Jana Bielikova kept the Cardinal from being shut out.
While that match was finishing, the Northwestern-Cal singles were starting, with the Wildcats taking the doubles point with a late break and hold at No. 1 doubles.
But it didn't take Cal long to reel off three points, winning at No. 3, No. 5 and No. 6 before Northwestern had any win at all on the horizon. Wildcats Mosolova and Georgia Rose gained their first sets at No. 1 and No. 2 but Lauren Lui had to win her second set against Claire Ilcinkas to make Rose and Mosolova's win matter.
Lui did her part, breaking Ilcinkas at 5-5 and fighting off two break points with clutch winners and then holding for the set.
Rose and Mosolova were up breaks, Rose in the second set in her match with Marina Cossou, and Mosolova in the third with Babos. Rose held hers to give Northwestern a 7-5, 6-4 win, but Mosolova began to wear down, and her 3-0 lead began to slip away.
"I could see that she couldn't really keep up physically," said Babos of the freshman from Russia. "I had to work really hard for it, but finally the mistakes started coming. At 4-3, I knew I was not going to lose."
Ilcinkas had taken a 3-0 third-set lead over Lui in that battle of left-handers, and from then on, it was a race to see who would clinch the upset. Mosolova was broken at love, losing her sixth straight game, and enduring a team loss for only the second time in her freshman year.
So Monday's semifinal will be Bears vs. Bears, No. 5 vs. No. 8, indicating that parity may have arrived for women's college Division I tennis.
For complete results, visit the University of Tulsa website.
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→Cal Upsets Northwestern 4-2; Baylor Trips Up Stanford 4-1 to Reach the Women's NCAA Final Four
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