The No. 9 UF women’s tennis team defeated No. 15 FSU on Tuesday, improving its record to 8-2 and furthering two impressive streaks.
With the win, Florida increased its all-time series lead in the rivalry to 50-1, and it was the Gators’ 84th-straight regular-season win at home, a school record.
UF swept the six singles and three doubles matches, a positive way to gear up for one of its toughest challenges of the season this weekend.
Florida will host No. 6 Duke, the defending national champion, on Sunday.
“I feel like were playing good tennis, and we have to make sure we don’t make it too much of a big deal,” UF coach Roland Thornqvist said. “It’s one match of many, and we need to continue the trend of getting better, and it’s a great opportunity for us.
“And if we do all the things we need to do and come in prepared,” he added, “I think we can be very good.”
Freshman Lauren Embree and senior Anastasia Revzina orchestrated the most emotional win against the Seminoles, winning four-straight games to come back from a 6-4 deficit and defeat Amy Sargeant and Francesca Segarelli of FSU on Court 2.
“Frankly, I thought we played well in one doubles match (No. 3 pair Allie Will and Marrit Boonstra), but we played terrible in the other two,” Thornqvist said. “The thing we preach the most is to play together, and I didn’t think we did that until the last two games of the set.”
Revzina added that nerves played a role in her doubles pair’s slow start, but she was able to turn things around before the ’Noles took a commanding lead in the match.
“Anastasia did a good job recovering though — she looked terrible in the first set,” Thornqvist said. “I could tell she had no feel, but then she started to get better mentally and landed a couple of nice forehands.”
Embree (No. 22) had the best overall outing of the day and cruised to victory (6-2, 6-1) in her singles match against Lauren McCreless.
“[Embree] played excellent tennis,” Thornqvist said. “She did a great job staying balanced in her singles match and really played fabulous tennis throughout the day.”
The UF men’s tennis team will also get a shot at its rival, as the Gators will host Florida State today at 5 p.m.
