media source avatar
The Southern ConferencePublished: 5/14/2024, Last updated: 6/10/2024
link picture
Copied!

ETSU women's tennis to face Duke in NCAA first round

Bucs heading to Knoxville, Tennessee

page picture
JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – The ETSU women’s tennis team officially punched its ticket to the 2024 NCAA Division I Women’s Tennis Championship on Monday, as the NCAA announced the brackets with ETSU included for the second consecutive year.
 
During Monday’s selection show, the NCAA revealed that ETSU would be heading to the Knoxville, Tennessee, regional to face Duke on Saturday, May 4, at the University of Tennessee. Tennessee is the No. 16 seed and will face Murray State. The winner of that match will face the advancing team from the Duke and ETSU matchup.
 
ETSU and Duke will face off for only the second time, the first being in Durham, North Carolina, with the Blue Devils winning a decisive 4-0 victory on May 9th in the first round of the 2014 NCAA Tournament. ETSU finished that season with a 14-9 record.
 
ETSU earned its spot in this year’s NCAA tournament by gliding through all three rounds of the Southern Conference Championship in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last weekend, culminating in a 4-1 win over No. 2 seeded Furman in the final round.
 
The Bucs finished the 2024 spring season with a 17-7 overall record, including ranked wins at USF and VCU on March 12th and 29th, respectively. ETSU ended the regular season with a thrilling 4-3 win against Furman to decide the regular-season champion and emphatically solidified that win with a 4-1 decision for the tournament championship and automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
 
The Bucs are led by SoCon Player of the Year Sofia Markova from the top spot, who owns an 14-8 singles record, and 13-9 doubles record alongside partner Alessandra Caceres. The duo earned first-team all-conference honors.
Redshirt senior Fernanda Carvajal has been on a tear for ETSU, winning nine of her last 10 singles matched (the tenth was abandoned during the conference tournament). She is second in the conference in singles match win percentage with a 16-5 record. She won SoCon Tournament Most Outstanding Player honors with a 5-0 record over three rounds. She and Daniela Rivera earned first-team all-conference honors with an 17-3 record.
 
Rivera was named second-team all-conference at the No. 3 position owning a 17-6 overall record in singles and an 6-1 mark in league matches. This season, Carvajal won her doubles match against No. 63 South Florida, No. 57 VCU and No 46. Charlotte.
 
Jana Rovira, Alessandra Caceres, and Ralitsa Alexandrova round out the roster with a combined 25 singles wins this season. Head coach Ricky Rojas leads the Bucs with over 100 wins as a head coach and four consecutive SoCon Coach of the Year awards to his name. He enters his second NCAA tournament as a head coach.