May 14, 2008
ATLANTA – The Georgia Tech women’s tennis team extended its streak to nine-straight NCAA appearances when they earned an at-large bid to the 2008 NCAA Championships and have advanced to the NCAA Round of 16 for the fourth-straight season following a pair of 4-0 wins in the first and second rounds. The Yellow Jackets will continue the defense of their NCAA title from a year ago by facing Texas Thursday, May 15 at 6 p.m. CT at the Michael D. Case Tennis Center on the campus of the University of Tulsa.
The Yellow Jackets are one of 14 seeded teams that have advanced to the NCAA Championships in Tulsa, including Clemson, Miami and Duke from the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Georgia Tech served as one of 16 host sites for the first and second rounds last weekend and improved to 8-0 in NCAA matches played at the Bill Moore Tennis Center.
The Yellow Jackets captured the first NCAA team title for Georgia Tech – in any sport – when they won the national championship in Athens, Ga. a year ago. The Georgia Tech football program has also won four national championships (1990, 1952, 1928, 1917) via wire service polls, and Yellow Jacket athletes have captured numerous individual NCAA titles in track and field and golf, but Tech’s only NCAA team title is by the 2007 Yellow Jacket women’s tennis team.
The Yellow Jackets have faced Texas on two prior occasions, with the first coming in the Yellow Jackets’ first-ever appearance in the NCAA Round of 16 in 2005. After the Longhorns took a 3-2 lead in the match, Lyndsay Shosho posted a comeback, three-set win at No. 5 singles to set up the top singles spot to decide the match. Texas’ Petra Dizdar fought off a rally by then-freshman Kristi Miller to win a three set match, 6-4, 1-6, 6-4, to clinch the 4-3 victory for Texas. The Longhorns went on to advance to the finals of the 2005 NCAA Championships, where they fell to Stanford.
The only other time the two teams squared off was the following year when Texas knocked Tech out of the ITA National Team Indoor Championships.
Tech is ranked No. 3 in the nation in the Fila/Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) poll and is the No. 3 seed in the 2008 NCAA Tournament. The Yellow Jackets enter the Round of 16 of the tournament with an overall record of 21-5.
Georgia Tech captured its fourth-consecutive ACC regular season title this season by going 10-1 against conference foes, but failed to earn its fourth-straight tournament title after falling to eventual champion Clemson in the semifinals of the 2008 ACC Championships. All nine NCAA appearances have come under head coach Bryan Shelton.