Panther tennis team feasts on weakened Bonnies

The Pitt women’s tennis team took advantage of an undermanned and inexperienced St…. The Pitt women’s tennis team took advantage of an undermanned and inexperienced St. Bonaventure squad that has not won a single game all year.

The 6-1 victory on Saturday was made easier for Pitt because St. Bonaventure has only five players — three freshmen, one sophomore and a junior — on its roster and was forced to forfeit a doubles match and a singles match.

Pitt (4-6 overall, 0-1 Big East) swept the first two doubles matches and won the third by default at the home game. The Bonnies’ Anna Perevenzetseva (who was named Atlantic Ten conference player of the week this week) and Ana Delgado fell to the Panthers’ Jill Williams and Emily Hughes in No. 1 doubles with an 8-3 score. The match marked Williams’ 99th career win, leaving her one win away from entering the 100-victory club.

In No. 2 doubles, Becky Emmers and Annie Davies secured the doubles point for the Panthers with a strong 8-2 win against Stephanie Fosnight and Jasmine Jaysingh. Emmers and Davies have been a dominant team so far this season, holding an 8-3 record, and have now won seven matches in a row.

“They’re a great team,” head coach George Dieffenbach said. “They’ve been winning with a combination of consistency and aggressive offense.”

Pitt’s Leah Friedman and Carlie Smith were credited with the final doubles’ win by default because St. Bonaventure was short a player.

In the first match of singles play, Williams fell to Perevenzetseva in a super-tiebreaker that ended up 4-6, 6-3 (10-4).

Williams’ loss would be Pitt’s only one against St. Bonaventure as Emmers pulled the Panthers back on track with a strong 6-0, 6-4 victory over Delgado in No. 2 singles. Davies topped Fosnight, 6-2, 6-1, in No. 3 singles, putting the Panthers up 3-1 in the match and bringing her own record to 10-3 for the season.

In the fourth singles match, Jaysingh fell to Pitt freshman Friedman, in a hard-fought match that ended 6-4, 6-2. Friedman now has a 12-7 record in her first year of collegiate tennis.

Also maintaining a strong record, Hughes had a 6-0, 6-1 victory over the Bonnies’ Sarah Costello. With this match, Hughes rolled her record up to 13-5.

“She’s had some great performances,” Dieffenbach said, “and she continues to lead the team in singles victories.”

Smith won in the No. 6 singles match, again by forfeit.

Dieffenbach is looking forward to the upcoming conference matches with hopes that the Panthers will improve their standing and compete for the Big East Championship.

“We suffered a tough loss earlier to Georgetown,” Dieffenbach said of Pitt’s 6-1 loss to the Hoyas on Feb. 5, “but the team is improving and we still have a strong schedule ahead of us. We have the chance to rebound from that conference loss and win the remaining matches.”

The Panthers have three matches against non-conference schools before they get back to work in the Big East, with seven conference games in the first 15 days of April, starting with matches against Seton Hall and Rutgers in Morgantown, W.Va, on April 1 and 2, respectively.

It will all lead up to the Big East Championships, hosted by the University of South Florida on April 21-23.

Editor’s note: The story on yesterday’s match at St. Francis will be in tomorrow’s paper. The results from today’s match against Youngstown State will be in published in Friday’s