Day One Release
Day Two Results
ITA Midwest Regional Championship Tournament Page/Live Webcast
 
URBANA, Illinois (10/17/2014) -- Day two of the ITA Midwest Regional Championships saw the main draw of doubles begin as the University of Detroit Mercy women's tennis team scored a huge victory on Friday.
 
The annual championship event is being held at the Atkins Tennis Center on the campus of the University of Illinois.
 
The Titans put together a strong and experienced duo for their top doubles team and they came out shining as juniors Irina Slizovskaya and Nino Sujashvili eliminated Notre Dame's Molly O'Koniewski and Mary Closs, 8-2.
 
"Irina and Nino played disciplined and got lucky a couple of times on the deciding points in the beginning of the match, but then dominated after that without any pressure," said head coach Pjotrs Necajevs '10. "We had a good game plan for the match since we saw one of the Notre Dame players yesterday in singles, where Lera (Valeryia Kulikovskaya) gave a great effort, so we felt we knew some of her strengths and weaknesses."
 
The Detroit duo then had to battle the 11th-seeded team in the tournament on its' home court in Illinois' Melissa Kopinski and Louise Kwong and despite a great effort, UDM was downed 8-4.
 
"We faced a seeded team from Illinois and Kopinski was an All-American for a reason last year, but Irina and Nino played very well and had momentum in the beginning of the match by being very aggressive," Coach Necajevs said. "The final score does not exactly show how close the match was. We got unlucky on a few big points, but I am proud of them because they both were very coachable. Illinois deserved the win, but I know if our girls face this high level competition more often, then we would produce more on the key points."
 
In other doubles action, Kulikovskaya and sophomore Anna Davydova put in a good run, but were upended by UIC's Melika LeBlanc and Keti Mebuke, 8-4.
 
Kulikovskaya was coming off a fine singles effort in Thursday opening day reaching the second round of qualifiers after defeating Bradley's Ariel Dechter, 6-0, 7-5, before dropping a three-set match to O'Koniewski, 6-2, 5-7, 6-1.
 
"Lera played extremely well yesterday with a big opening win and then a tough, gritty performance against Notre Dame. She fought back to get it to three sets and her play yesterday really helped us out in doubles today," added Coach Necajevs.
 
Day three of the regional championships is set for tomorrow as the Titans still have one player in the mix in Slizovskaya, who was selected to the main draw of singles. She will face DePaul's Jasmin Kling, a former BIG EAST Freshman of the Year and All-BIG EAST last season, who has been ranked in the top 100 for most of her career.
 
"The ITA Regional is the strongest tournament on our schedule where we have a chance to compete against the best teams in the Midwest, " said Coach Necajevs. "Several of the Midwest teams are consistently ranked in the top 25 nationally so it is very exciting for us to see how we match up with those programs."
 
Saturday is slated to start at 10:00 a.m. (EST) with round three of doubles followed by the first two rounds of main draw singles in the afternoon.
 
For the latest brackets, schedule, live webcast of the championships, visit the ITA Tournament page by clicking here.