No. 9 Miami goes 2,700 miles to ultimately end season to No. 8 Pepperdine in NCAA Sweet 16
The No. 9 Miami Hurricanes had the longest trip of any team in the country — nearly 3,000 miles — to get to Malibu, California to face the No. 8 Pepperdine Waves in the Sweet 16 round of the women’s NCAA tennis tournament.
The trip home might seem longer.
Pepperdine defeated the Hurricanes 4-0 Friday to advance to the NCAA national quarterfinals next weekend in Urbana, Illinois, where the Waves will meet No. 1 North Carolina next Friday. UNC defeated the Florida Gators 4-0 Friday in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
“Obviously, they’re upset,’’ UM coach Paige Yaroshuk-Tews said of the Hurricanes. “We flew across the country for one match and for our season to end like this is disappointing. But at the same time they’re proud of everything they’ve accomplished and how far we’ve come as a program.
“We took one huge step forward this year. We’re going to end top-10 in the country. We hosted the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament that we hadn’t had in a few years. We’re back and we’re going to start knocking on people’s doors. Today, Pepperdine was just better.”
The Hurricanes ended their season 19-6 overall and 10-3 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Pepperdine, a member of the West Coast Conference and the runner up to Texas in last year’s NCAA team championship final, rose to 23-6. The Waves have seven ranked singles players and four ranked doubles teams.
This was the 26th consecutive time the Hurricanes had qualified for the NCAA team tournament but the first time since 2013 they reached the quarterfinals. Miami’s all-time NCAA team tournament record is now 57-36, good for the 10th most wins of any Division I program.
UM has made it to the national championship final twice, losing in 1985 to USC and to Stanford in 2006.
The Hurricanes have won two national titles in singles. Estela Perez-Somarriba won the last championship in 2019 and Audra Cohen won in 2007.
Though UM’s team season is over, the Canes still have two singles players — 33rd-ranked Daevenia Achong and No. 37 Eden Richardson — who earned spots in the NCAA singles championship . Achong and Richardson will also represent the Hurricanes as a doubles team.
“We’re hoping to make a run,’’ Yaroshuk-Tews said.
The 64-player singles and doubles tournament is May 23/24-28 at the Khan Outdoor Tennis Complex in Urbana, Illinois.
Friday’s results
Doubles: Savannah Broadus and Janice Tjen (Pepperdine) d. Tatyana Nikolenko and Maya Tahan 6-2; and Shiori Fukuda and Taisiya Pachkaleva (Pepperdine) d. Audrey Boch-Collins and Isabella Pfennig 6-3.
Singles: Shiori Fukuda (Pepperdine) d. Daevenia Achong 6-1, 6-1; Taisiya Pachkaleva (Pepperdine) d. Maya Tahan 7-6, 6-0; Savannah Broadus (Pepperdine) d. Audrey Boch-Collins 6-1, 6-0.
This story was originally published May 13, 2022 at 6:46 PM.
