The ASU women's tennis team looks on as teammates Leighann Sahagun and Joanna Smith finish up their match against San Jose State, Friday, March 20, 2015, at Whiteman Tennis Center in Tempe. (J. Bauer-Leffler/The State Press)The No. 19 ASU tennis team (12-3, 3-0) notched its third Pac-12 conference win of the dual-match season after sweeping Washington State on Sunday, 6-0.
All three of the team’s conference wins this season have come on the road to this point, after defeating Utah and Colorado last week. Each of the three victories have been captured via sweep, as well.
After the team’s win over San Jose State on Friday, head coach Sheila McInerney said that she was looking forward to playing another conference match.
“We’ve just got to battle,” she said. “Washington State always has a good team with a lot of international kids, and they fight hard.”
In fact, the Cougars feature three players from Russia, two from Sweden, one from the Netherlands, one from Belgium and one from Ireland in their lineup.
The team’s unique and diverse roster makes it the only school in the Pac-12 to be solely composed of international players.
However, contrary to their coach’s expectations, the Sun Devils seemed to manage their opponents quite handily.
The day would begin with the singles portion instead of the doubles. The Sun Devils had already played a game with this scenario in a win over San Francisco.
A few of the players had said they enjoyed the change in order then, and they proved to really take advantage of the match early on today, eventually winning all six of the singles matches.
In light of the match result being decided in favor of ASU, the match was called after the singles half, so no doubles session was played.
The win is the team’s second straight victory following its close loss to No. 16 Pepperdine on Friday.
The next time the Sun Devils take the court will be on Friday, March 27 against No. 10 Stanford at 1:30 p.m. in Tempe.
Here are Sunday’s results:
Singles
1. Desirae Krawczyk (ASU) def. Maria Biryukova (WSU) — 6-1, 3-6, 6-3
2. Stephanie Vlad (ASU) def. Elizaveta Luzina (WSU) — 6-3, 6-3
3. Kassidy Jump (ASU) def. Lize Leenknecht (WSU) — 6-3, 6-0
4. Joanna Smith (ASU) def. Victoria Matejevic (WSU) — 3-6, 6-2, 7-5
5. Leighann Sahagun (ASU) def. Donika Bashota (WSU) — 1-6, 6-3, 6-0
6. Ebony Panoho (ASU) def. Holly Monahan (WSU) — 6-1, 6-1
Reach the reporter at kajone31@asu.edu or follow @kaelenjones on Twitter.
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