By Kasey McMillian
Reporter
Baylor women’s tennis (11-3) witnessed a 4-0 shutout, its third loss in the last five matches, by UCLA (10-0) on Sunday at the Hurd Tennis Center.
“UCLA has a great team and they just outplayed us tonight,” head coach Joey Scrivano said. “That was the main problem today — they just out-played us.”
Baylor doubles partners senior Nina Secerbegovic and freshman Megan Horter tried to give Baylor a good start by winning three straight games 8-5. However UCLA won the doubles matches with an 8-1, 8-4 win and after that in singles Baylor was not able to recover.
In singles, only Secerbegovic and senior Sona Novakova earned a first-set win for Baylor. Then UCLA came back with second-set wins, ending the matches of No. 28 Secerbegovic and No. 43 Novakova before they could finish.
“Nina (Secerbegovic) and Sona (Novakova) have been in a lot of big matches and I like their chances against anybody in the country, so those are two positions that we feel real confident about,” Scrivano said. “However the name of the game is getting four points and we’re just falling short of that.”
UCLA’s No. 6 Robin Anderson defeated Baylor’s No. 17 Diana Nakic, senior, 6-2, 6-2 on Court 1. Then UCLA’s No. 61 Kaitlin Ray defeated Horter 6-1, 6-2, and UCLA’s No. 102 Chanelle Van Nguyen beat Baylor’s freshman Nicole Kosakowski.
Another match that was suspended was Baylor’s freshman Ema Burgic fighting back from a 6-3 first-set loss to No. 121 Skylar Morton and leading in the second set 3-0.
“We just have to do what we’re doing better, and it’s a process,” Scrivano said. “We got some young players in there in our lineup that just need to get better, we have to get better. Our focus every day is to get better, we need to get better at every position, and unfortunately it’s coming a little bit slower than we’d like.”
On March 1, Baylor opens Big 12 Conference play against 34th-ranked Texas Tech at 3 p.m. in Lubbock.
