Women's Tennis Earns NCAA Bid
5/3/2006 8:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
May 3, 2006
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - The University of Maryland earned an invitation to the NCAA Division I Women's Tennis Championship and will play South Florida in a first-round match on May 12 in Gainesville, Fla., the NCAA announced Wednesday evening.
The Terrapins, 12-11 overall, will face South Florida of the Big East Conference in one of two first-round matches to be hosted by the University of Florida. The Gators, seeded fourth in the 64-team field, play Samford in their first-round match.
First-round winners will play their second-round match in Gainesville on Saturday, May 13. The second-round winner will head to Stanford, Calif., for the round of 16 to be played on May 18. Top-seeded Stanford will host both the men's and women's national finals.
For Maryland, the NCAA bid is the second in as many years. The Terrapins lost to Harvard in last year's opening-round match. Currently ranked 33rd in the nation in the most recent FILA Collegiate Tennis Rankings, Maryland has played well this season against a difficult schedule.
"One of our goals was to return to the NCAAs, so we feel good about that," said Maryland head coach Martin Novak. "We trained hard and competed well. I think the with the schedule we played, we got enough good wins and had a good enough strength of schedule to get in. It will be very good to be playing college tennis in May."
Maryland played 19 matches against teams ranked in the FILA top 75 this season and have wins over South Carolina and Virginia, which were in the top 25 at the time of the Terp victories. Nine of the 64 berths in the field went to Atlantic Coast Conference teams, including Georgia Tech (seeded 6th nationally), Miami (7th), Duke (8th) and North Carolina (9th).
"I think we did really well against some good teams," said Novak. "We had some excellent matches. We won a few and were close in all of them. This team has been willing to work and willing to compete this year."
South Florida, ranked 40th in the FILA rankings, finished second in the regular season in the Big East and comes into the tournament with a 16-5 record overall. The Bulls also placed second in the Big East Tournament, winning two matches before losing to Notre Dame in the final. The Irish earned the second seed nationally in the draw announced Wednesday night.
"I know of them," Novak said of South Florida. "We know they're a very good team. We'll be playing in their climate and they'll be close to home. At this point, there are no easy matches. It will be nice to have an NCAA feel playing in Central Florida. Florida always does a first-class job in hosting events such as this."
Maryland is led by senior Ramona But, who was recently named All-Atlantic Coast Conference for the fourth straight year. But is 17-4 in singles this season, while All-ACC teammate Marianne Baker finished at 20-13 in singles. Those two paired to post a 25-5 record as a doubles team this year.
