By Brian Kiley
Daily Bruin Contributor
[email protected]
PALO ALTO “”mdash; Great teams come from behind.
Great teams look almost-certain defeat right in the eye and
don’t blink.
By those two measures, the Georgia Bulldogs are a great team. On
Friday at the Taube Family Tennis Stadium, UCLA won the doubles
point and led in several singles matches, but Georgia rallied to
capture the 4-2 win.
The Bulldogs had already faced one match point in the tournament
and had failed to secure the doubles point both Thursday and
Friday, but they have continually won matches coming from
behind.
“We been down in so many sets that we’ve won that we
almost feel like we’re tied when we’re down (a
break),” Georgia head coach Jeff Wallace said.
On Friday, the Bulldogs, who were defeated Saturday by Stanford
in the semifinals, certainly didn’t play like a team that was
behind, despite early leads that UCLA opened up in several
matches.
At the No. 1 singles spot Megan Bradley, who was coming off a
loss to Jewel Peterson of USC in the Round of 16, was up a break at
5-3 in the first set before Agata Cioroch of Georgia stormed back
and won 10 of the next 11 games en route to a 7-5, 6-1 win.
“I gave her too many points,” Bradley said. “I
just made too many mistakes, yesterday and today.”
Bradley and Cioroch exchanged groundstrokes for most of the
match, with neither of them coming to the net often, and in the
second set it was clear that Bradley was letting Cioroch control
the points.
“At that level you can’t have any let ups,”
UCLA head coach Stella Sampras said. “I think she let up a
little bit, and (Cioroch) took advantage. Megan was right in there,
but she needs to be in a little better physical shape to win at
that level.”
Wallace was thrilled with the performance of his top player.
“Bradley is a superstar,” he said. “(Cioroch)
beat an unbelievable player, but Agata had great wins match after
match all year.”
Lauren Fisher also watched a lead evaporate in her match with
Tina Hojnik. Fisher had lost the first set 6-3, but held a 4-0 lead
in the second set before things started to unravel.
Hojnik took her game to another level and won six straight games
to take the match 6-3, 6-4.
“I was playing more balls in the court so that we had
longer rallies,” Hojnik said, explaining how she turned
things around in the second set. “I was being more consistent
so that she made the mistakes. Before that, I had been making all
of the mistakes.”
Fisher was shocked by the sudden change in momentum but knew
that there were things she could have done differently to keep
things going her way.
“I don’t know what I was doing,” she said.
“I was letting her control everything. I needed to be coming
in and putting pressure on her, and I didn’t.”
UCLA had their chances to knock off the Bulldogs, but Georgia
was the one able to escape with the narrow victory using clutch
play down the stretch and persistence in the face of near
defeat.