|
Thursday, May 2, 2002
FIU meets Miami in NCAA
opening round play
 or
the second consecutive year, the No. 35-ranked FIU women's tennis
team earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament when pairings
were announced Thursday evening.
In an all state-of-Florida regional beginning next Friday,
May 10 in Gainesville, the Golden Panthers (18-6) meet cross-town
rival and No. 32-ranked Miami
(14-6) while top-ranked Florida
(19-1) takes on UCF
(11-11).
The winners meet Saturday, May 11 for the regional crown and
the victor of that match moves on to the Round of 16, Thursday,
May 16 at the Taube Family Tennis Stadium in Stanford, Calif.
Miami (Big East), Florida (Southeastern) and UCF (Atlantic
Sun) all won conference championship tournaments and earned automatic
berths. The Golden Panthers fell to South Alabama in the title
match of the Sun Belt Conference and needed to rely on receiving
one of 33 at-large invitations extended.
"It is really exciting to be selected again to the Tournament
and keep the tradition alive," said FIU head coach Ronni
Bernstein. "But it's been tough the last couple
of weeks waiting and we had been keeping our fingers crossed."
FIU and Miami are certainly no strangers on the tennis courts
and the two programs have plenty of interesting story plots.
FIU Coach Bernstein was a four-year All-American for the Hurricanes
in singles and doubles (1984-88) and was the NCAA Senior Player
of the Year in 1988 after reaching the finals in doubles and
semifinals in singles at the national championship.
On the Miami side, its No. 1 singles player Mari Toro
played as a freshman at FIU before transferring down the street
to Coral Gables.
The Golden Panthers and UM met once previously this spring
with Miami winning, 6-1. But FIU played that match shorthanded
after two of its players were ruled ineligible and three matches
were forfeited.
Since then, FIU has won 14 of its last 18, including a string
of nine straight with victories over ranked opponents SMU, Michigan
State, Florida State, New Mexico State and the then No. 9 Tennessee.
"Miami is definitely a program we are all quite familiar
with," said Bernstein. "We know what we need to do
in order to be prepared to face them next weekend."
FIU is led at the top of singles by a pair of local high school
products as Anneliese
Rose (Boynton Beach, Fla./Atlantic H.S.) at No. 1 and
Mei
Ly (Miami, Fla./Coral Gables) at No. 2 have recorded
overall team highs of 19 and 23 singles wins respectively.
In doubles, Rose and her partner Cristina
Campana (Quito, Ecuador) ended last fall by winning the
doubles championship at the Omni Hotels/ITA South Region and,
with an overall 23-9 record, hold a current national ranking
of No. 42.
After playing 14 seasons of Division I women's tennis, the
Golden Panthers earned their first invitation to NCAA competition
last year, traveling to Nashville, Tenn. and beating Penn State,
4-0, in opening round play.
Bernstein, in her sixth season in charge of the program, is
the winning coach in FIU women's tennis history with a career
mark of 95-45. |