Women’s Tennis Closing Home Slate Saturday

Saturday, April 1

Memphis, Tenn.

10:00 am

University of Memphis

University of North Texas

Photo by: Joe Murphy

Mar 31, 2017 | Women's Tennis

Memphis hosting North Texas at 10 a.m. in final 2017 home match.

By: Tammy DeGroff

MEMPHIS – The University of Memphis women's tennis team (10-5, 1-0 American) has won seven of its last eight matches and will close its 2017 home schedule with a non-conference match up against North Texas, Saturday, at 10 a.m., at the Racquet Club of Memphis. Admission to the senior day match for Marta Morga and Gabrielle Paul is free.

About Memphis (10-5, 1-0 American)

Anki Wind is the defending American Athletic Conference player of the week after going 4-0 in one singles and two doubles last weekend. The two singles wins pushed her mark to 18-9 for the season.
Freshman Katherine Cao is tied with Anki Wind for the team lead in singles victories. The freshman has 18 wins and six losses in her first collegiate season, including a 9-2 mark at five singles and a 1-0 mark at four. In her last 10 matches, she is 7-1 with two unfinished matches.
Hanna Sohn has played at both one and two singles during the season, and actually played one singles in the last meeting against North Texas, grabbing a straight set victory. Sohn is 15-11 on the season in singles play, including a 7-6 mark in dual season play. She is 2-0 at one singles and 5-6 at two.
Memphis spent a good part of the last three weeks of the season working on finding a doubles lineup that generated a doubles-winning spark to each dual season match. The Lady Tigers have used four different line ups at one and five different lineups at two doubles. Senior Marta Morga has been a part of generating wins from the three doubles slot in the lineup, pairing with three different partners for a 7-4 mark.
Saturday will be the final career home match for Morga and Gabrielle Paul.
Morga is a four-year letterwinner for Memphis and brings a 54-34 career singles mark in to Saturday's match. Morga is also 34-46 in doubles play for Memphis over her career and her 12 doubles wins so far this season are a career-best.
Paul is a two-year letterwinner at Memphis after transferring from Saint Leo. She is 14-29 in singles play in her Memphis career and is 23-25 in doubles. Most recently, she has teamed with freshman Katherine Cao to play one doubles in a 2-0 weekend at Middle Tennessee last week.

About North Texas (6-11, 0-1 Conference USA)

The Mean Green is playing just its fifth match of the season outside of their home facility. North Texas is 5-8 overall in home matches and 1-0 in a neutral site match against Wisconsin at Oklahoma back in February. UNT is 0-3 in true road matches so far this season.
North Texas has faced a number of opponents from Power 5 conferences already this season, and has gotten them to come to Denton to play: Michigan State, Kansas State, Washington State, Arizona, and Kansas have all ventured to North Texas for a non-conference match.
North Texas and Memphis already have one common opponent on the 2017 roster. Both teams beat Lamar. UNT won 6-1 over a visiting Lamar squad, while Memphis defeated Lamar in its last home weekend, 4-1.
Sophomore Maria Kononova has the Mean Green's longest active winning streak. She has won five in a row and is now 14-3 at one singles for the season. She jumped 21 spots in the ITA singles rankings in the last ranking period and comes in to Saturday's match ranked #61 in the country. Kononova played Hanna Sohn at one singles in last year's match up in Denton and Sohn won, 6-4, 6-3.
Kononova also has an impressive streak going in doubles play. She has teamed with Tamuna Kutubidze and is a perfect 12-0 at one doubles on the year.
This is the fifth meeting between Memphis and North Texas. UNT leads the overall series, 3-1, including a 4-2 win in Denton last year when the Mean Green were ranked #73 in the country. UNT won the one other match-up played in Memphis, 4-0, back in 2002.