UNC Tennis: Tar Heel teams advance to Sweet 16

One of the North Carolina spring sports that have most consistently produced good Tar Heel teams in recent years has been tennis. That’s continued this year, and now both of the UNC tennis teams are into the Sweet 16s of their particular NCAA Tournaments.

After a 29-1 regular season, the UNC women’s tennis team was given the #1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, and they looked like it in their victories in their first two rounds.

Carolina opened their tournament last Friday against Charleston Southern with a 4-0 win and followed that up with another clean sweep on Saturday against Old Dominion.

In case you’re unaware, the way college tennis works is that each team matchup is decided by a best of seven matchup. The two schools play six singles matches for a point each, and three doubles match, which combine in a best two of three for a seventh point. Whichever team wins four points gets the win.

UNC cruised in the opener against Charleston Southern, with no Tar Heels in any danger of losing any of the matches. For the doubles points, two UNC teams quickly won by 6-0 and 6-2 scores, with their team also leading 5-1 in the third match.

In the singles, #1 ranked singles player in the country Fiona Crawley, Abbey Forbes, and Reilly Tran all won their matches in straight sets to secure the victory. The next day, it was a fairly similar story against Old Dominion. After some more quick doubles wins, Crawley and Anika Yarlagadda picked up wins with Tran then getting the clinching win to send Carolina into the Sweet 16.

With the wins, UNC is now set to take on the #16 overall seed in Florida. That matchups is set to be held this Friday in Chapel Hill at 5 PM ET.

The men are also into the Sweet 16 as they picked up wins over Drake and Utah.

The Tar Heel men were given the #16 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament and were tasked with facing the Drake Bulldogs in the opening round last Saturday.

Drake grabbed a point off the Heels by winning two of the three doubles matches, including an upset win over UNC’s Casey Kania and Ryan Seggerman, who are the #7 ranked doubles team in the country. However, Carolina quickly responded with four-straight singles wins to get back and track and advance to round two.

The second round matchup against Utah went much smoother as UNC swept their way to victory. Kania and Seggerman bounced back with a win as the Heels swept the doubles point. Seggerman then followed that up by being one of three Carolina singles players to get a win to ensure a 4-0 victory in the matchup. One of those wins came thanks to Benjamin Kittay, who produced this on his way to the W.

Carolina will now have a very tough task on their hands, as they’re set to take on the #1 overall seed in Texas this weekend. On Saturday, they will head down to Austin to take on the Longhorns at 4 PM ET.

Best of luck to both UNC tennis teams this weekend!