Rutgers Tennis Earns No. 8 Seed at BIG EAST Championships
Apr 16 | Women's Tennis
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (April 16, 2012) - Rutgers University women's tennis will be the No. 8 seed in the upcoming BIG EAST Championships and will face No. 9 Cincinnati in the first round on Thursday, April 19 in Tampa, Fla., the league office announced Monday. The Scarlet Knights ended the regular season winning their final six league matches.
"We had three great wins last week to end the regular season and we feel like we have a lot of momentum," said ninth-year head coach Benjamin Bucca. "There is nothing like winning - it is contagious and it makes everything fun. We feel great about how we have been playing down the stretch and look forward to the BIG EAST Championships."
The Championships will be held at the Varsity Courts on the campus of USF from April 19-22. The top 12 teams in the league qualified. Each squad will play at least two matches, with the presence of a consolation bracket.
Rutgers (12-8, 7-3 BIG EAST) completed its schedule with wins over Seton Hall, Pittsburgh and West Virginia last week. Senior Jennifer Holzberg (Easton, Conn.) won all six of her matches, while the Scarlet Knights took the doubles point on each occasion. RU won its first round match over WVU last season before falling to Syracuse in the quarterfinals.
Cincinnati (7-16, 3-5 BIG EAST) is currently on a three-match losing streak. Ashleigh Witte leads the team with a 13-10 record, while Jasmine Lee has played 23 singles matches at the first position. Angela Wilson is in her fourth season at the helm of the program.
It will be the first match against the Bearcats since the Scarlet Knights traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio on Feb. 15, 2009, with UC winning a tightly-contested match, 4-3. Current seniors Holzberg and Morgan Ivey (Mt. Pleasant, S.C.) are the only student-athletes on the RU roster with experience against Cincinnati.
"The BIG EAST in women's tennis is clearly an emerging conference," said Bucca. "This is the strongest the conference has ever been, as we have four teams with a national ranking and a number of teams that compete effectively against these nationally-ranked teams, including us. There has never been this much depth or such a high level of play in the BIG EAST until now. We have to come ready to play and we are going in healthy, motivated and as a cohesive unit. That's a recipe for success."
The winner of the RU-UC match will take on No. 1 seed Notre Dame on Friday, April 20 at 9 a.m.
Click here for BIG EAST Tennis Championship Central.
Seedings
1. Notre Dame
2. USF
3. Syracuse
4. DePaul
5. Georgetown
6. Louisville
7. Marquette
8. Rutgers
9. Cincinnati
10. St. John's
11. Pittsburgh
12. Seton Hall
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