Sept. 16, 2003
WACO, Texas - Baylor's women's tennis team, defending Big 12 champions, will play a very difficult 2004 non-conference schedule to prepare them for the rigors of the Big 12 Conference and NCAA Tournament play, head coach Joey Scrivano announced today.
The Bears will begin the season in January facing three teams that ranked 13th or higher in the final ITA polls last season. In fact, they will play seven team that had a final ranking of 25 or higher and half of their matches will be against top 40 teams.
Scrivano led the Bears to their first-ever Big 12 Championship last season in his first year at the helm of the program. He returns four players, Stephanie Balzert, Zuzana Krchnakova, Izabela Mijic, Daria Potapova, off last season's highly successful squad and has three talented newcomers, Iva Mihaylova (Bulgaria), Carolin Walter (Germany) and Klara Zrustova (Czech Republic).
"We are excited to be playing one of the toughest schedules in the country. There is no better preparation for NCAA Tournament than playing top notch competition each week. We believe that playing top 10 programs like Georgia, Duke, and Vanderbilt early in the season will pay off down the stretch. Also, our freshmen are going to have to learn quickly about what it takes to play big time college tennis."
Scrivano, beginning his second season at Baylor, will open spring play on Jan. 23 in Nashville, Tenn., when the Bears take on Vanderbilt which ranked 13th at season's end. The next day, also in Nashville, Baylor will face Duke who ended the 2003 season at No. 3. On Jan. 31 Scrivano's squad will get to play on the courts where the 2004 NCAA Championships will be held when they take on the Georgia Bulldogs who ranked 7th at season's end. The Bears then travel to Clemson, S.C. and tangle with a Clemson Tigers squad that was 19th in the final polls. Baylor will play five more non-conference matches (Mississippi, TCU, UT-Arlington, Florida International, Miami) before beginning Big 12 play.
The Bears' first league opponents will be the University of Texas, Nebraska and Missouri before traveling to New Orelans to take on Tulane. Two more Big 12 matches,Texas Tech and Colorado, are on the schedule before Baylor faces its last non-conference opponent when they play SMU. The month of April is all Big 12 matches when the Bears host Texas A&M, travel to Kansas and Kansas State, host Oklahoma and Oklahoma State and visit Iowa State.
The Big 12 Tournament, hosted by the University of Oklahoma, will run from April 29 to May 2. First and second rounds of the NCAA Championships are May 11-13 and the Georgia-hosted NCAA Championships are May 20-29.
To view schedule, go to schedule link on women's tennis page.
