Seton Hall women’s tennis fell in a hard fought battle to St. John’s on Sunday afternoon by the score of 4-3. The Pirates pushed the Red Storm, who are now 5-0 in Big East Conference play, to their brink, but could not pull off the victory. The loss dropped Seton Hall to 1-2 in Big East games and 7-7 overall this season.
For doubles, Seton Hall rolled out Luize Strike and Anicka Fajnorova in first doubles, Thandy Kangwa and Katie Kim in second doubles and Michal Matson and Melody Taal in third doubles. Only Kangwa and Kim were able to pick up a victory.
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Photo via SHU Athletics[/caption]
Despite struggling a bit in the doubles portion of the day, Seton Hall played much better in singles. Many Pirates had good days on the court, including Matson. The freshman finished nearly perfect in her singles set, winning 6-0 and 6-1. She also served as the team’s vocal leader for most of the afternoon. After the game, Matson gave her team a vote of confidence despite the unfortunate outcome on the day.
“I think this is a huge building block,” Matson said. “I think this is a really good confidence booster to see how strong we are and how able we are to compete against the big teams.”
St. John’s is slated to be the top team in the upcoming Big East Championships for women’s tennis, so there was a sense of pride after the match amongst the Pirates in the fact that they were almost able to squeeze out a win.
In terms of the rest of the day, Taal and Kangwa also picked up singles wins, both in three sets. Taal went 6-3, 3-6 and 6-3, while Kangwa went 7-6, 6-4 and 10-7 in the ten-point tiebreaker.
Junior Strike and sophomore Anicka Fajnorova tested St. John’s top players, however neither were able to fight their way to a win.
Seton Hall will look to carry the momentum from today into their final two matches of the season. They travel to DePaul on April 22 and Marquette on April 23 before the Big East Championship begins on April 27.
Kevin Kopf can be reached at kevin.kopf@student.shu.edu or on Twitter @KMKTNF.
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