Cats Drop 6-1 Decision to Owls on Sunday

HOUSTON - K-State freshman Karine-Marion Job picked up a straight-set win to account for the Wildcats' lone point in a 6-1 defeat to the Rice Owls at George R. Brown Tennis Center on Sunday.

"It wasn't our best overall performance in singles today," head coach Jordan Smith said. "We did well in some spots and had a tough time in others, which is going to happen throughout this season. It will be hard for the team to play their best every single match. We need to have better follow-up plan on those days when we can't use all of our strengths."

Job, a native of Lyon, France, defeated Linda Huang 7-6 (7-1), 6-4 at No. 5 singles for the Cats' only victory on the day. Job improves her spring singles record to 3-1.

Rice (4-2), who possesses a pair of nationally ranked doubles teams, claimed a tightly contested doubles point before taking five of six singles matches to hand the Wildcats (3-2) their second loss of the spring season. K-State is now 0-3 all-time against the Owls.

At the No. 1 doubles spot, sophomores Margot Decker and Anna Turco went against Michaela Haet and Huang and fell 6-4.

The Owls' 35th-ranked tandem of Anastastia Smirnova and Priya Niezgoda defeated Job and Ines Mesquita at No. 2 doubles 7-5, while the Wildcats' freshman team of Ioana Gheorghita and Maria Ponomareva trailed 6-5 to No. 51 Anna Bowtell and Victoria Smirnov, but went unfinished.

Playing at the No. 1 spot for the third consecutive match was Decker, who battled against 74th-ranked Haet and lost 6-4, 6-3.

Mesquita pushed Victoria Smirnova to a third-set tiebreaker before ultimately falling 7-5, 1-6, 1-0 (10-5) at second singles while Turco lost to Anastasia Smirnova 6-2, 6-0 at the No. 3 position.

Rice's Bowtell defeated Ponomareva 6-0, 6-2 from the fifth spot and Gheorghita, playing at the sixth position, lost to Niezgoda, 6-1, 6-3.

The Wildcats next travel to Denton, Texas, to take on North Texas on Friday at 2 p.m. before a neutral site battle against Arizona on Saturday at noon.

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Team Stats

Players Mentioned

Margot Decker

Ioana Gheorghita

Karine-Marion Job

Ines Mesquita

Maria Ponomareva

Anna Turco