After winning both the Southeastern Conference regular season and tournament titles, the No. 1 Florida women’s tennis team is exactly where it wants to be.
The team is on a 16-match winning streak, with wins over other tournament teams including Georgia, Vanderbilt, Auburn and South Carolina.
But that was all in SEC play.
In the tournament, the Gators (21-2) will be forced to prove themselves against elite teams from conferences across the nation.
“I think the key thing for our players is to feel like they are getting better,” coach Roland Thornqvist said in a release after winning the SEC Tournament. “The little things that we work on week in and week out seem to prevail.”
While the Gators have seen themselves improve over the course of the season, their home-court advantage may play a bigger factor than any prior preparation.
Florida has won 157-straight dual matches at home.
At the Ring Tennis Complex on May 13-14, the Gators will host the first and second round of the NCAA tournament, with their first matchup coming against South Carolina State. The winner will face the winner of Syracuse and Georgia State. The rest of the tournament will take place in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
This is just the sixth time the two teams have met, and South Carolina State will be looking to unseat a UF team that has made it to at least the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament every season since 2010.
The Bulldogs went 8-10 on the year and 4-1 in Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference play, winning the MEAC Championship. They are led by Intissar Rassif in singles, who was named the tournament’s Outstanding Performer, and the duo of Dakota Brown and Rassif in doubles.
South Carolina State has also won 11 of the last 12 MEAC Championships.
In order to move on, the Bulldogs will have to break Florida’s home winning streak, currently the longest at the Division I level. They will also have to go up against some of the highest-ranking singles and doubles players in the country.
The Gators are led by No. 4 Brooke Austin, who was named the SEC Player of the Year for the second-consecutive year and the ITA Southeast Region Player to Watch. Belinda Woolcock checks in at No. 11, while Kourtney Keegan is ranked No. 40 and Anna Danilina is ranked No. 63. In doubles, the Gators boast No. 3 Austin and Keegan, No. 42 Woolcock and Josie Kuhlman and No. 64 Danilina and Brianna Morgan.
In their last 16 matches, the Gators outscored their opponents 75-11. The Bulldogs, on the other hand, won seven of their last eight matches, outscoring opponents 36-12 during that stretch.
Both teams are entering Friday’s match with some momentum, but the match may be determined by whether or not Florida can sustain how it has played all season long.
“That is probably the most important thing,” Thornqvist said. “We want to be able to tell our players and have our players feel like they have done all the work necessary all year.”
The NCAA tournament starts Friday at 2 p.m. and Florida is hoping to capture its first title since 2012.
Contact Jake Dreilinger at jdreilinger@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @DreilingerJake
Brooke Austin hits an open-stance backhand during Florida women's tennis' 4-0 win against Elon on Jan. 24, 2015, at the Ring Tennis Complex.
