The grittiest teams, it seems, are the ones that dealt with challenges early in a season and then found a spark, that little difference that had been missing, to become among the more dangerous opponents in the postseason.
After a rough start to the season, the 12th-ranked Michigan women’s tennis team (21-6) is playing in the Sweet 16 for the fourth straight year and will face No. 5 North Carolina (26-3) on Friday afternoon at the Tar Heels’ Chewning Tennis Center. The Wolverines hosted first- and second-round NCAA Tournament matches last weekend and had a gritty 4-2 win over No. 17 Florida to advance to this super regional. Last season, Michigan hosted two weekends and made the Final Four for the first time in program history.
“We’re in a little bit of a different position this year just because the start to our season was rough,” Piper Charney, who ranks No. 8 nationally in singles, said Thursday. “We were losing to great teams, but we were at one point No. 76 in the country, so I think we’re a little bit impressed and proud of ourselves. We’re at the Round of 16, we did get to host first and second rounds and we’re Big Ten champs. What we’ve done is so impressive up to this point. There’s definitely an air of, let’s keep showing how far we’ve come, whereas normally we’re defending home turf. That’s a good little chip on our shoulder this year.”
The Wolverines started the season 1-4 but have since won 20 of their last 22 matches. They won a share of the Big Ten regular-season title and won the Big Ten Tournament and then advanced in the NCAA Tournament winning their first two rounds.
“We’re just playing much more as a team,” Charney said. “As bad as it looks like it’s getting out there — we’ve lost four first (singles) sets to Michigan State, we’ve lost four first sets to Florida last week, we’ve been down against Maryland, we’ve lost doubles points — we’ve been in all those positions and come out on top. It’s like we know now what we’re capable of, even if other people are still doubting us.”
Even during the early-season struggles, Michigan had consistent performances from Reese Miller. She’s 31-9 this season and leads the team with 20 dual-match wins. Miller was 2-0 last weekend and was first off the court against Florida with a straight-set win.
“This has definitely been a great year for me, and I’m, of course, very happy with how I’m doing individually, but the team is just everything for me,” Miller said. “As long as I can help this team, I kind of was able to help pull the team out of the rut we were in a little bit with having a good year. So that’s just the most important thing to me, just showing up for the team and winning for the team.”
Charney and senior Lily Jones have both played top-court singles, but Charney said Miller could easily slide up from Court 3 to fill either one of those courts. But with a 17-4 record at No. 3 singles, Miller has been an anchor for the Wolverines.
The rest of the team caught up to Miller’s consistency, and now the Wolverines head into the Sweet 16 match against UNC with confidence.
“We started a bit rough at the beginning of season, which now feels like forever ago, but we’ve really been able to get rolling here in the end of season, winning the regular season as well as the Big Ten tournament,” Miller said. “That just helped our belief, which is something we definitely struggled with at the beginning of season. But now we’re back to kind of our normal Michigan tennis program where we believe we can beat anyone, and we’re carrying that into this match here at UNC.”
Charney said to expect to see the Michigan team that rebounded after the 1-4 start in the match against North Carolina.
“We’re going to go out there, and we’re going to be gritty,” Charney said. “We’re going to fight and hopefully we’re going to get it done.”
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Michigan women’s tennis carries chip on shoulder into Sweet 16 match
Reporting by Angelique S. Chengelis, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
