April 26, 2011
SAN DIEGO -
2011 MWC Women's Tennis Championship Bracket in PDF Format
No. 50 San Diego State heads to Fort Collins, Colo., and Colorado State for the 2011 Mountain West Conference Women's Tennis Championship. The third-seeded Aztecs will face the No. 6 seed, Wyoming, on Thursday, April 28, at 10 a.m. MT.
SDSU (15-9 overall) finished the conference season with a 6-2 record, a match behind second-seeded Utah (13-9; 7-1 MWC) and two matches behind regular-season league champion and No. 1 seed UNLV (19-4; 8-0 MWC). The Aztecs won six straight to open the MWC slate, but dropped a pair of narrow 4-3 decisions on consecutive days to both the Utes and Lady Rebels to put them at No. 3.
One of San Diego State's six Mountain West victories came against a Cowgirl side in Las Vegas, Nev. The league-opening win against then-No. 68 Wyoming was a grind-it-out battle that resulted in a 4-3 decision. The Aztecs swept through doubles and won three of four matches to move ahead, 4-1, and secure the win. The top three duels at the top of the ladder, however, were three-set battles, including the clincher at No. 3 when Alicia Aguilar defeated Simona Synkova, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3. To finish the match, Wyoming claimed three-set victories at Nos. 1 and 2 to provide the narrow margin.
The Aztecs are 12-1 vs. Wyoming all-time, but the last two meetings have resulted in 4-3 scores. A season ago, the Cowgirls escaped with the decision in San Diego to post their only win over SDSU. That match went down to the wire as the score was tied at 3-3 before the visitors finished on the winning side of a three-set outcome.
Thursday morning's clash will mark the first time the schools have met in the 12-year history of the Mountain West Conference Championship. The last time SDSU and Wyoming tangled in the league tournament was in 1998 when both were members of the Western Athletic Conference. The Aztecs were victorious that day, 5-0, in Fort Worth, Texas.
San Diego State is in search of its second MWC Championship title and its first since the 2003 campaign. The Aztecs enter the tournament with an all-time record of 13-10 at the Championship and were finalists in 2010 after beating fourth-seeded BYU and top-seeded Utah, before falling to the No. 6 seed, TCU.
Julia Wais and Emma Cioffi, who play singles at Nos. 2 and 4, respectively, carry lengthy winning streaks into the single-elimination tournament. Both have won five straight and have been tough outs at each of their positions. Wais, who has spent time at the top three slots, has settled in nicely at No. 2, going 11-4 on the second court (14-9 overall - dual). Cioffi, meanwhile, has seen action at Nos. 3-6 and been dominant at No. 4, while producing a 9-1 record (17-7 overall - dual). Elsewhere in the singles lineup, Laura Antonana Iriarte has won three in a row and Julia Trunk is coming off a solid three-set win over No. 123 Lucia Batta of UNLV at the top of the ladder.
Speaking of solid, the Aztecs' doubles performance has been just that. San Diego State has captured the point 16 times and only once has lost the match after having claimed the point. Roxanne Ellison and Sierra Ellison are 12-6 at the top spot (12-6 overall - dual), while Aguilar and Wais boast a record of 13-4 at No. 2 (16-7 overall - dual). Trunk and Cioffi, meanwhile, are 12-5 this season at No. 3 (15-8 overall - dual).
If the Aztecs win on Thursday, they move on to face the winner of the No. 2 Utah/No. 7 Air Force match, which is slated for Thursday at 10 a.m. MT. The semifinal tilt is scheduled for Friday, April 29, at 10 a.m. MT.