MOBILE, Ala. (2/20/10) - North Texas Tennis dropped its first conference match of the 2010 season to No. 38 Florida International 5-2 on Saturday afternoon at the Lubel Memorial Courts on the campus of South Alabama.
The Mean Green (4-3, 0-1) started out strong, winning two of the three doubles matches.
"We put our self in position to win the match by winning the doubles point and having leads in several matches but could not close it out," said head coach Sujay Lama. "A lot of it had to do with the way FIU fought; some of it had to do with us not staying focused the entire time. Like we talked about it before the match, they were not going to hand the match to us. We had to go and take it from them."
From the No. 1 spot, sophomore Irina Paraschiv and Junior Amy Joubert took care of business when it mattered most against FIU's Liset Brito and Maria Jose Vallasciani, winning the match 8-6.
North Texas' No. 2 duo is proving to be the most consistent. The freshman, senior pair of Barabora Vykydalova and Catalina Cruz clichéd the doubles point when the defeated the Jaguars Christine Seredni and Magali Holt 8-6.
Cruz was the only member of the Mean Green to win her singles match, when she took down Holt in straight sets, 6-3, 6-2.
After dropping her first set 6-0, Vykydalova had to battle back in the second set if she was going to have a chance to win the match. That second set ended up in the freshman's favor, when she took it in a tiebreaker 7-6 (5), although she would go on to lose the third set 6-1.
Joubert joined Cruz as the only players t win their first set when she jumped out on top of Vallasciani 7-6 (4). She would go on to drop the next two hard fought sets and the match 6-4, 6-3.
"We are determined to improve and become mentally stronger so that we have the opportunity to meet them again in New Orleans," added Lama. "For now, the ladies are very dissapointed about the lost opportunity. They also realize we have very little time before we play South Alabama tomorrow and improve from what they learnt today."
North Texas will square-off with South Alabama tomorrow morning at the Lubel Memorial Courts at 11 a.m.
