Syracuse’s Dina Hegab drifted toward the corner and sent a defensive lob over the net. The senior had Louisville’s Diana Wong at match point, and she watched as Wong sent a forehand into the net. Wong dropped her racket and crouched, her feet in the same spot they were for the shot.

Hegab’s 6-1, 6-4 victory was the clincher in No. 25 SU’s (7-4, 1-2 Atlantic Coast) 6-1 win against Louisville (9-3, 1-1) on Friday afternoon at the Bass-Rudd Tennis Center. It was the fifth time this season Hegab has clinched for the Orange and marked the third straight victory and first ACC win of the spring season for SU.

Syracuse got on the board first by winning its third consecutive doubles point after it had lost the previous five. Sofya Golubovskaya and Masha Tritou won their matchup 6-2 over Chloe Hamlin and Aleksandra Mally, but Hegab and Guzal Yusupova lost by the same score. The two SU pairs flipped spots in the doubles lineup from last Sunday’s win over Colorado.

Gabriela Knutson and Miranda Ramirez clinched the doubles point for Syracuse with a 6-4 win against Sena Suswam and Dina Chaika. After trailing 3-2, SU’s No. 1 pair won five out of the final six games in their third straight doubles victory.

Louisville tied the dual up quickly in singles, as Raven Neely defeated Yusupova 6-0, 6-2. Neely won 11 out of the first 12 games in the match, before Yusupova took two at the end. Prior to Friday, Yusupova had won four straight sets, and had not lost a contest since Feb. 8 against then-No. 7 Pepperdine.

But straight-set victories by Knutson and Ramirez broke open the match. Knutson, up to No. 42 in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association singles rankings, defeated Suswam 6-2, 6-3 for her fifth consecutive singles victory. No. 71 Ramirez won her contest 6-3, 6-0 for her third straight victory, her fourth in her last five matches.

After Hegab’s clincher, Libi Mesh and Tritou both won their matches in third set super-tiebreakers. Mesh defeated Chloe Hamlin 6-2, 6-7 (1-7), 1-0 (10-7) for her third consecutive singles win, while Tritou won against Nikolina Jovic 1-6, 7-6 (9-7), 1-0 (10-5), overcoming a lost first set to win her first singles contest of the season.

Friday marked the third consecutive match that sophomore Golubovskaya did not play in singles. For the last two duals, she’s played only doubles and wasn’t in the lineup for either in last Friday’s victory over Colorado.

Syracuse continues its four-match road trip on Sunday, traveling to South Bend, Indiana, to face Notre Dame (7-2, 1-0) at 11 a.m.

Published on February 22, 2019 at 6:55 pm

Contact Andrew: arcrane@syr.edu | @CraneAndrew