ORLANDO, Fla. – The No. 22 UCF women's tennis team earned its sixth straight victory and fourth sweep of the season as they defeated Miami, who received votes in the latest team rankings, by a score of 4-0 on Saturday afternoon. The win doubles as the Knights' first victory over Miami in program history.
"I thought our team played tough and played great in big moments," said head coach Bryan Koniecko. "I liked that we stayed in second sets; I think that kept the confidence in the team to finish. We played a good doubles point that gave us the lead and we were able to capitalize on that."
Due to heavy rain in the area prior to the match and more expected during the competition, the match was moved indoors to the Adidas Performance Center at the USTA National Campus and pushed back to a 1:15 start time.
The Knights began the doubles segment strong, leading on two of three courts early on. UCF's All-American tandem of No. 6 Rebeka Stolmar and Marie Mattel cruised to a muscled their way to a 6-1 victory over Estela Perez-Somarriba and Florencia Urrutia on court one. No. 60 Ksenia Kuznetsova and Valeriya Zeleva jumped out to an early lead in doubles before watching Daevenia Achong and Isabella Pfennig claw their way back. The Knight tandem was able to slam the door and collect a 6-4 win on court two, sealing the doubles point. Kuznetsova and Zeleva's victory makes them 6-0 on the season as a pair.
Singles was intense throughout, as each court was back-and-forth nearly the entire match. First sets were split evenly between the two sides with two long tiebreakers going the way of Miami.
Jaleesa Leslie was the first Knight to collect a point in singles as she defeated Khodan 6-2, 7-5 on court six. The freshman is off to an impressive start as she's won five straight matches to get to 5-2 on the season.
Moments later, No. 95 Evgeniya Levashova was victorious on court three. After winning the first set with ease, she edged Tahan in the second stanza to win 6-1, 6-4.
The Knights clinched the match on court two where No. 67 Zeleva earned her second win over a ranked opponent this season, knocking off No. 87 Achong 6-3, 7-6 (7-3).
Three courts went unfinished, including the most intense match of the afternoon. No. 42 Stolmar was matched up against 2019 singles national champion No. 2 Perez-Somarriba on court one. The two went back-and-forth for the entirety of the match. Perez-Somarriba won the first set by a count of 6-4 and was ahead 5-4 in the second frame. Stolmar had a 30-15 edge in the game and was serving.
Courts four and five went unfinished as well. Kuznetsova fell in a tough first set tiebreaker which ended with Pfenning taking it 7-6 (13-11) but was leading the second set 2-1. Mattel was edged in another close tiebreaker on court five by Urrutia and was even at 3-3 in the second stanza.
Saturday was UCF's first victory over the Hurricanes in 10 tries. It was also the first time that Miami had visited the Knights to play a match. The Knights have earned a lot of firsts during the Koniecko era against in-state teams. The team has won their first match against Florida, Florida State and Miami all in the last three seasons.
The Black and Gold have grabbed three Power 6 victories to this point in the season and four wins over in-state foes. UCF tallied two wins over then No. 21 Florida and earned the clean sweep of Miami to give them a trio of Power 6 wins. The Knights defeated Stetson with a clean sweep as well and have outscored in-state opponents by a count of 19-5. UCF still has a while to go before they can claim they're the top team in the state, as they're scheduled to play No. 7 Florida State, FAU, UNF, South Florida and FIU.
UP NEXT
The Knights will head to the state of Texas for a pair of matches against Big 12 opponents. UCF will face TCU on Friday at 1 p.m. before squaring off against No. 2 Texas on Sunday, also at 1 p.m.
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