IRVINE, Calif. \u2014 Junior Candela Aparisi picked up her fifth straight singles victory, but the Cal Poly women\u2019s tennis team suffered its Big West defeat of the season, falling 4-3 in hard-fought battle at UC Irvine on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The dual, which started two hours later than originally scheduled due to weather, started with singles play.<\/p>\n
After the Mustangs fell at No. 1, sophomore Jessica MacCallum was able to level the dual at 1-1 with a dominant straight-sets victory at No. 2, 6-2, 6-3. She improved to 9-5 at the No. 2 spot this season and 5-2 in conference matches.<\/p>\n
Cal Poly lost in straight sets at both No. 5 and No. 6, allowing the Anteaters (12-7, 3-4 Big West) to take a 3-1 lead. But the Mustangs rebounded with some thrilling three-set victories at No. 3 and No. 4.<\/p>\n
At No. 3, Aparisi earned a 7-6 (12-10), 3-6, 6-4 win to improve to 11-7 this season and 5-1 in Big West play. Then Alexandra Ozerets secured a pivotal come from behind victory at No. 4 to level the dual at 3-3. After dropping the first set 3-6, she won the second and third sets 6-2. It was her 55th career singles victory \u2014 adding to her school record \u2014 and she moved to 11-8 this season and 5-2 in conference matches.<\/p>\n
With the dual knotted up at 3-3, it all came down to the doubles point. At No. 2, junior Natalie Lynch and Aparisi were able to grab a commanding 6-1 win, improving to a team-best 10-5 this season and 4-0 in Big West play. But the Mustangs lost at both No. 1 and No. 3, allowing UCI to earn the 4-3 win.<\/p>\n
With two matches remaining in the season, Cal Poly (11-8, 6-1 BW) now sits in second place in the conference standings. Blue-Green rival UC Santa Barbara is currently in first place with a 7-0 Big West record.<\/p>\n
The Mustangs return home to host UC Riverside at noon Wednesday before taking on UCSB at the Ronca Tennis Center at 1 p.m. on Saturday to wrap up regular season play.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IRVINE, Calif. \u2014 Junior Candela Aparisi picked up her fifth straight singles victory, but the Cal Poly women\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-265257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}