Tournament Central | NCAA Championship Program | NCAA Bracket (Interactive)
MALIBU, Calif. – The LIU Brooklyn women's tennis team opens the 2017 NCAA Championship Tournament Friday afternoon, taking on No. 11 seed Pepperdine in the opening rounds in a match slated to begin at 4 p.m. Eastern Time at the Ralphs-Straus Tennis Center.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS (Times in PST)
First Round - Friday, May 12
10 a.m. No. 23 UCLA vs. No. 47 UC Santa Barbara
1 p.m. No. 12 Pepperdine vs. LIU Brooklyn
Second Round - Saturday, May 13
12 p.m. Winner of first round matches
FOLLOW LIVE
Live scoring will be available for all matches during the weekend. Score updates will also be posted to Twitter through @WavesTennis and @LIUAthletics.
LAST TIME OUT
The Blackbirds won their first Northeast Conference championship in seven years, shutting out the No. 3 seed and defending champions Fairleigh Dickinson, 4-0. LIU capped a dominating run through the three-day event as the Blackbirds did not surrender a single point in the tournament.
LIU, which won its third NEC crown (2009, 2010 and 2017), became just the eighth team in conference history to sweep all three of their tournament matches en-route to the title. Heading into NCAA Tournament play, the Blackbirds have won eight straight matches.
The Blackbirds earned the conference's automatic bid as 2017 Northeast Conference champions. LIU also took the NEC's top three major awards. The league's head coaches recognized sophomore Anna Grigoryan's outstanding season by unanimously selecting her as the 2017 NEC Player of the Year. It was a clean sweep, with freshman Sasha Bollweg earning NEC Rookie of the Year accolades and Anthony Davison collected NEC Coach of the Year honors in a vote of his peers.
In addition to sweeping the major awards, the Blackbirds had 10 different first or second team All-NEC honorees in singles or doubles, and two All-Rookie honorees.
SCOUTING THE WAVES
Pepperdine, the host school, earned a No. 11 seed in the NCAA Tournament, and rank No. 12 in the nation in the latest Oracle/ITA Rankings. The Waves finished the regular season 21-4 overall, including an undefeated record in the West Coast Conference. Pepperdine finished the year winning 16 consecutive matches, dating back to March 11. 12 of those were 4-0 sweeps, en route to the program's fifth-straight WCC championship title. The Waves are also 11-1 at home, losing only to top-ranked Florida.
Sophomore Luisa Stefani, who recently was named the WCC Player of the Year for the second straight season, is the team's top player, ranked No. 14 in the nation. The Waves have two other players ranked in the top 40, a No. 8 ranked doubles team, and like LIU, swept the conference's major awards. Ashley Lahey was named the WCC Freshman of the Year, and head coach Per Nilsson was named WCC Coach of the Year for the third straight time.
Pepperdine has faced both UCLA and UC Santa Barbara once this season, winning both matches with a 5-2 result.
CHAMPIONSHIP FIELD & FORMAT
As NCAA policy states, the top 16 seeds are guaranteed to host if a bid was submitted and the criteria are met, and matches between conference opponents were avoided in the first two rounds of the championships. The first- and second-rounds features four teams playing in a single-elimination format with the winner of each site advancing to Athens, Georgia, where the 16 teams will compete for the national championship beginning May 18. A full list of the 64 teams participating can be found on NCAA.com. Other host schools include Florida, Baylor, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech, Georgia, California, Vanderbilt, North Carolina, Duke, Michigan, Stanford, Texas Tech, Auburn, South Carolina and Ohio State.
Tournament matches will be regulation dual matches with three eight-game, pro-set doubles played for one team point, followed by six singles matches, each valued at one team point, played in best-of-three sets. Regular scoring will be used and a 12-point tiebreaker will be played at seven-games-all in doubles and at six-games-all in singles.