(Photo Courtesy of Sun Devil Athletics)
For one last time, tennis teams all along the West Coast will travel to Ojai, California to participate in the last-ever Pac-12 championship. Both teams from ASU will look to win their first-ever Pac-12 championship, and it wouldn’t hurt to do so in the final one ever.
Men’s
Coming as the No. 23 ranked team in the nation the Sun Devils (16-8, 4-2 Pac-12) earned the No. 4 seed in this year’s Pac-12 championship. They’ll be facing the No. 58 California Golden Bears (10-9, 3-3 Pac-12), who earned the No. 5 seed in the tournament.
For the Sun Devils, they’ll be looking to have a better performance than last year’s tournament where they fell to Oregon in the first round, 4-3. The team has been ranked top-25 most of the season, and they look to make a deeper run than last year but will need some major upsets to make that happen.
In the first match they have to get past California, and due to their match being canceled earlier this season, the Sun Devils haven’t matched up with the Bears yet.
Regardless, ASU is 7-3 in its past 10 matches and is rolling in the back half of the season. With the only three losses coming to Stanford, San Diego and Arizona.
The Sun Devils will need their powerhouse in No. 12 junior Murphy Cassone to set the tone on Thursday afternoon. Following a match-clinching win this past weekend, Cassone earned his second Pac-12 Player of the Week honor which puts him at 11-5 in singles play for the year.
If he can set the tone early and continue the Sun Devils hot streak they should be able to take care of the Golden Bears who are currently on a two-match losing streak.
Another player that the Sun Devils will need is No. 55 freshman Bor Artnak who has a team high 12 singles win this season and is 12-2 on the year.
If the Sun Devils take care of business they’ll most likely face No. 1 seeded Stanford. Both teams faced off in the regular season and the Cardinal took the match 4-0. The match was a lot closer than the final score indicates, two singles matches and one doubles match required a tiebreaker to decide the winner of a set.
No. 12 Cassone and Cardinal sophomore No. 17 Nishesh Basavareddy will be the matchup to watch if these two teams square up. Their last meetup was unfinished due to the match ending, but Cassone took the first game 7-6 and was up 6-5 in the second set.
If the Sun Devils complete the upset then on April 27, they’ll most likely face No. 2 Arizona or No. 3 UCLA. Arizona was crowned co-champions of the Pac-12 in the regular season with Stanford as both went 7-1 in conference play.
If ASU were to prefer one opponent they would lean towards UCLA as they already bested the Bruins earlier in the season 4-2.
Women’s
The women will face the same opponent as the men’s team in round one, as the No. 27 Sun Devils (14-8, 6-4 Pac-12) play the No. 10 California Golden Bears (16-5, 8-2 Pac-12). ASU secured the No. 5 seed in the tournament while the Golden Bears got the No. 4 seed.
These two teams played earlier in the season and it was California who took the match 4-3. ASU led early in the match after taking the doubles point, but the Golden Bears rallied in singles play to come back and take the match.
The biggest difference between then and now is ASU didn’t have their best player, No. 74 ranked senior Guilia Morlet, healthy. Now the Sun Devils come into the match fully healthy and looking to make a run similar to what they did in 2022 when they were the No. 5 seed and upset USC and Cal.
If the Sun Devils move on past Thursday they’d most likely face No. 9 UCLA Bruins (17-4, 9-1 Pac-12) who is the top seed in this tournament. The Bruins demolished the Sun Devils last they met, 4-0. However, the Sun Devils didn’t have Morlet in that match as well.
If the Sun Devils go on another upset spree then they’ll face No. 3 Stanford Cardinal (19-2, 8-1 Pac-12). The only two losses the Cardinal took this season were against the Bruins and No. 1 Oklahoma State Cowboys. The Cardinal also played the Sun Devils without Morlet and they took the match 4-2.
The Sun Devils will need everything they can get out of four players. For starters, Morlet needs to be on her A-game if ASU has any chance of making a run. She’s 10-3 on the year and is currently on a four match winning streak. Another player they’ll need is No. 108 ranked freshman standout Emilija Tverijonaite who has a team-high 14 wins in singles play.
Two more players ASU will need is their best duo team on the roster. Sophomore Chelsea Fontenel and junior Patricija Spaka who are ranked No. 35 in the country for doubles play. The duo dropped their second match in conference play last weekend against Arizona, which the duo knows was one of their worst matches of the season so far together.
“I don’t know, it was pretty terrible,” Fontenel said. “I can’t remember the last time we played this horrible. The energy was there, we just couldn’t quite tap into it and gain momentum, but I guess it happens.”
The duo knows they can bounce back this week when the team needs them to.
Both teams have the mentality to take it one match at a time, and in a single elimination tournament like this anything can happen. Each Sun Devil team hopes that mentality will carry through in the matches regardless of what happens. The goal is the be the final team ever to bring home the Pac-12 hardware.
