The West Virginia women’s tennis team was confident it would be able to hold its own against its opponents heading into its three matches this past weekend.
Unfortunately for the Mountaineers, that happened just once in three matches as WVU fell to Marshall and Miami (Ohio) in Huntington 7-0 and 6-1, before beating Eastern Kentucky 4-3 Sunday.
The Mountaineers had a few close matches sgainst Marshall, including three singles contests that went into third-set tiebreakers before the Herd came away with the victories.
The next game against the Redhawks featured a lot of the same for the Mountaineers.
"Both of those teams were very strong, national-level programs," said West Virginia head coach Marc Walters of Marshall and Miami. "We just didn’t match up and compete as well as I thought we would, but we played well in spots and in doubles, even though we didn’t win them."
The team did come away with its lone point of the first two matches of the weekend when freshman Liv Pettersson won out of the No. 6 spot in the singles competition in three sets.
It seemed the Mountaineers were finally able to hit their stride by Sunday.
The team came away with a 4-3 victory over Eastern Kentucky to get back to its winning ways it started within the first three matches of the season.
They lost the doubles point, winning just one of the three doubles matches.
"They were all close matches. We had opportunities, but we just couldn’t close them out," Walters said.
The Mountaineers picked up where they started singles play.
Redshirt junior Monique Burton, playing in the No. 1 spot for the first time this season as Walters gave Stephanie LaFortune a day off, picked up a win against the Colonels’ Myriem Mhirit.
WVU also got strong performances from sophomores Veronica Cardenas and Kathryn Haught before junior Ashley Pilsbury was able to clinch the match for the team by winning in two sets 7-6, 7-5.
"Ashley was down 5-1 in that second set," Walters said. "She saved about six set points in that game, and then kept clawing back for the next half hour and got back to where she was in position to win the set."
The team will continue its road trip Wednesday as it kicks off Big East Conference play on the road against rival Pittsburgh.
The match is set to start at 4 p.m.
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