TEMPE – For the 32nd consecutive year, the Sun Devil women's tennis team led by coach Sheila McInerney has punched its ticket to the NCAA Tennis Championships and will face Illinois in the Durham, North Carolina, region Saturday at 10 a.m. PT.
"It's nice to go somewhere we haven't been in a while," coach Sheila McInerney said. "It's tough to travel across the country, with finals and big projects for the girls. It's tough, but it's good and that's kind of what you expect in the NCAA Tournament."
The bid to the tournament came after the Devils recorded their 25th-straight winning campaign, finishing 13-10 overall and 5-5 in the Pac-12. Despite a five-match slide that lasted nearly a month, ASU roared to life in the latter half of the season to win eight of its last 10 matches, including two four-match win streaks.
"We had to really play well toward the end of the season and there was a lot of pressure on us at one point," McInerney said. "We needed every one of those eight wins to get in and it was great to finish strong."
Along with Saturday's opponent Illinois, No. 5 Duke will welcome James Madison to Durham for the regional and the winners of the two Saturday matches will play in the regional championship Sunday.
Big Ten tournament conference runners-up, The Fighting Illini of Illinois come into Durham on a bit of a hot-streak themselves, having won 10 of their final 12 matches to finish the season. Their only two losses came against the same team in Michigan, once in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and once in Nebraska in the title match.
"We've got a tough Illinois team coming up and we expect them to give us all that we can handle in that first match," McInerney said. "We don't know them very well, but they've really made great strides in the last couple of years and they're solid up and down the lineup. When you finish as the runner-up in the Big Ten, it's pretty clear you're a good program."
Beyond the team tournament, the Sun Devils will also have representation in the doubles championship bracket with Lauryn John-Baptiste and Ilze Hattingh back in the field of 32 tandems for the second-straight season.
They enter the tournament as the No. 3 overall seed after a stellar second season together that included 14 wins and just two defeats during the regular season.
ASU's opening round match against the Illini will take place at 10 a.m. PT. Live results links can be found on the Duke Athletics website, and @SunDevilWTennis will have live tweets during the weekend's matches.
John-Baptiste/Hattingh Back in NCAA Championships
Arizona State's All-American duo from a season ago finds itself back in the tournament again, this time as the No. 3 overall seed after another outstanding season of leading the line for the Sun Devils on court one.
Lauryn John-Baptiste and Ilze Hattingh combined for a team-leading 14 wins and suffered only two defeats in their 2019 campaign for the Devils.
The duo picked up 10 wins over ranked opponents and spent two weeks as the No. 1 team in the nation. One of those wins even came against the current No. 1 team from Southern California.
Including their fall seasons, the pairing won 19 matches overall and four over women ranked in the top-11.
The 2019 NCAA Doubles Championships will take place in Orlando, Florida after the conclusion of the Team Championships.
Last Time Out
The Sun Devils went 1-1 at the Pac-12 Championships in Ojai, California, sweeping the Oregon Ducks in the opening round then falling to three-seed Washington in the conference quarterfinal round.
The Devils entered the Championship as the six-seed in the conference and recently handled the Ducks 6-1 in Tempe just under two weeks ago. The familiarity played to the Devils' advantage as they were able to wrap up the sweep in a little over two hours.
ASU's first point came from the doubles matches when court two's No. 76 Alicea/Hampton and court three's Slaysman/Kolarova took care of their Oregon opponents.
Just like their previous meeting, it didn't take long for ASU to extend its lead on Oregon as freshman Samantha Alicea swept her way to a win on court six 6-0, 6-0 – an improvement on her 6-2, 6-2 win in Tempe.
In the last match, Oregon's one win came on court five, but the result was reversed Wednesday as Savannah Slaysman rolled to a 6-4, 6-2 win to bring ASU within one point of advancing to the quarterfinal round.
Sammi Hampton battled to a 6-4 win in the first set, but made it look easy in the second as she cruised to a 6-1 win and clinched a Sun Devil victory for the second-straight outing.
The next day, in the final match of the evening, ASU fell to Washington 4-0 and the Huskies advanced to the conference semifinal round.
The Opposition: Illinois (Duke/JMU)
Coach Evan Clark has the Illinois women's tennis program on the upward trend. After taking over the program in 2015, the UMKC alum has led the team to 67 wins in the past four seasons.
The Illini only have one woman ranked in the singles ranking, but they recently got as far as the Big Ten championship match behind excellent play on all courts. While they fell to Michigan in the final, the loss in the title match was only their second in 12 matches.
Similar to the Sun Devils, Illinois hit a rough patch where it lost six of seven, but followed it up by finishing the season taking 10 of 12. Once the 18th team in the nation, the Illini come into Durham, North Carolina, at No. 30 in the Oracle/ITA rankings.
Should the Devils advance past Illinois, they'll take on either host Duke, or regional four-seed James Madison.
One of the premier programs in the nation, Duke is the fifth-ranked team in the country and just finished as the runner-up in the ACC championship match.
The JMU Dukes won the Colonial conference tournament title to clinch an automatic bid to the NCAA Team Tournament. It was their first conference title in their 46-year history.