Lady Raiders open season with loss to in-state foe Vanderbilt

Saturday, January 23

Murfreesboro, TN

12 PM

Middle Tennessee

Vanderbilt

Photo by: Emily Cole/MT Athletic Communications

1/23/2021 3:33:00 PM | Women's Tennis

Box Score

By: Anthony Fiorella

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — An excited Middle Tennessee women's tennis team took the court looking forward to the uphill battle it faced to open the year against fifteenth-ranked Vanderbilt to start the new season.

After a hard-fought doubles point in which the Lady Raiders fought back from down 4-2 in two different matches, Vanderbilt powered ahead to take the doubles point and eventually win the overall match 7-0. Though it was a 7-0 final, the Lady Raiders made the Commodores work for each of their wins, as Muskan Gupta, Noelle Mauro and and Zani Barnard all dug themselves out of some bad situations to make it interesting in singles play.

"Just to get out there and do some of the things we practiced and see them work against one of the best teams in the nation is pretty big, so that was something good," said Middle Tennessee Head Coach Tayo Bailey-Duvall. "I always tell the girls that the match isn't over until it's over. We had so many matches where we were down 5-3, 4-1 or 4-2 and had a shift in momentum to where we got back into the match. We decided early we wanted to play everything out to get as much playing in as we could, especially with everything going on this year."

After each pairing found itself down 3-1, both Zani Barnard and Muskan Gupta and Lee Barnard and Lidia Burrows each battled back to tie their doubles matches at five apiece and three apiece, respectively. Lee Barnard and Burrows wound up dropping their match 6-3 and Zani Barnard and Gupta dropped a tough decision 7-6 in a tie break.

The Lady Raiders were paced in singles play by Lidia Burrows. The fifth-year senior found herself in a tight battle against Vanderbilt's Holly Staff. After Burrows took her first set 6-2, Staff won the second set 2-6 and took the only third set of the day by a score of 2-6.

Burrows currently sits in third in school history for all-time singles wins with 80, just 11 wins behind the all-time leader; Nayara Moraes.

"I was glad I got off to a good start," Burrows said. "[Staff] is an aggressive player, and that's what I like to go up against. Things just went a bit downhill starting in that second set. We just want to take from the good things we were able to do today and do them again moving forward. I think if we play the way we did today against Kentucky we should be able to get some wins."

Middle Tennessee travels to Lexington, Kentucky, on Thursday for a matchup with the University of Kentucky. Start time is currently scheduled for 10:00 a.m.

Anthony Fiorella is a writer for goblueraiders.com. Follow him on Twitter @a_fiorella74 and also follow @MTAthletics for more on the Blue Raiders.