Senior Anna Danilina is the only Gators women's tennis player left in the NCAA Division I Championships.
As Day 2 of the NCAA Division I Championships came to an end on Thursday, the participating Gators found themselves nearly wiped from the brackets.
The one shining bright spot on the day for UF came from senior Anna Danilina. In her match against Texas’ Anna Turati, she fell into trouble in the first set before turning it around and steadily handling the next two. Danilina eliminated Turati 1-6, 6-2, 6-2 to move on to the round of 16.
Senior Josie Kuhlman did not share her teammate’s success. In her match against Stanford’s Emily Arbuthnott, Kuhlman took the victory in a close first set before dropping a hard-fought second set. She was unable to recover and close out the match in the tiebreaker, dropping the match 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 and exiting the tournament in the second round. Kuhlman finished her collegiate career with a 116-39 record in singles play.
Florida’s only doubles team in Danilina and freshman Victoria Emma saw its tournament run end earlier than it hoped. The duo, which took on Oklahoma State’s Vladica Babic and Sofia Blanco, took the first set of the match 6-4. While this would have won the match in a dual meet, NCAA rules are a bit different: the match goes to a best of three sets, and the third set, if necessary, is played as a 10-point tiebreaker. Oklahoma State’s team took the second set 6-4 and the match went to the third-set tiebreaker.
Oklahoma State took the match 4-6, 6-4, 10-8 and ended UF’s run in the doubles bracket.
Danilina, the lone survivor of the day’s events, will face off against Duke’s Kelly Chen in the Round of 16 tomorrow.
Follow River Wells on Twitter @riverhwells and contact him at rwells@alligator.org.
