Orangewomen Tennis Team Earns Fifth Seed in 2004 BIG EAST Championship
4/27/2004 12:53:00 PM | Tennis
Syracuse enters this year’s tournament with a 9-11 overall record and a 6-2 mark in the BIG EAST. SU’s first opponent will be fourth-seeded Virginia Tech, which is ranked 71st nationally. If the Orangewomen get by the Hokies, they are scheduled to play top-seeded Notre Dame, which is ranked 28th in the country. The bottom half of the bracket includes No. 2 Miami, No. 3 Boston College, and No. 6 Rutgers.
“We’ve come a long way in the last two months,” SU head coach Mac Gifford said. “We’re playing really well, we’re really motivated, and we’re having a lot of fun. We’re looking forward to playing teams we played earlier this year who we didn’t fare so well against, and we’re looking forward to the opportunity to play them again.
“Our doubles teams are clicking. Our singles players – every match we go out, we play better. The discussion in practices has been about playing Virginia Tech against, which would be our first-round opponent. Everybody is psyched. The first time we played them, the morale was down because two of our players had been stricken with injuries and another was sick. The first time, we felt we could have won if we’d had our entire team. So, playing them again is our chance to prove to the powers that be that we are not to be taken lightly.”
Last season, SU entered the tournament as the sixth seed and tied with Rutgers for fifth place in the league after the fifth-place match was cancelled due to inclement weather. The Orangewomen lost to third-seeded Boston College in the quarterfinal match, 4-1.
Syracuse and Virginia Tech square off on Thursday, April 29, at 9:00 a.m., in Coral Gables.
