KANDAKAI, TORRES CLAW BACK

Recap, photo courtesy of Biola University

On a day in which Concordia Irvine sped to victory, the Eagles found a positive ending in No. 3 doubles.

Brandon Taylor, Assistant Sports Information Director

COMPLETE RESULTS

LA MIRADA, Calif. --- It was a bit too late by the time Biola women's tennis finally broke through to get the Eagles first point of the afternoon against Concordia University Irvine. But the tandem of Tinisee Kandakai and Allison Torres at No. 3 doubles successfully shook off losses in singles and a 6-3 deficit in their tiebreaker to win Thursday's final flight 8-7 (8-6). 

Concordia pulled out to an early lead in singles with straight-set victories and eventually clinched the contest, 5-0. The margin would eventually grow to 7-0 by the time the visiting team took No. 2 doubles 8-0. But then Biola finally got to see its efforts accounted for on the scoreboard with close matches in the last two doubles pairings.

Head Coach David Goodman's team did a good job competing in individual games with its opponents. But Biola had a hard time closing out those games until Lauren Lee and Lily Waterhouse made a match of the No. 1 flight.

Playing together for the first time since Feb. 22, L. Lee and Waterhouse fell one break-of-serve short from pushing Concordia's No. 1 doubles team to a tiebreak and were clipped 8-6. 

Kandakai and Torres found themselves on the other end of the late-match situation complete. The duo was up 7-6 in their doubles fixture only to find themselves forced into a tiebreaker by Ghada Al-Ajeely and Haley Diefenbach when Torres serve was broken.

After the tiebreaker started with back-and-forth scoring that resulted in a 3-3 tie, Kandakai and Torres had to push uphill when unforced errors put them down 6-3. But they rattled off five-straight points, and benefitted from a crucial unforced error from CUI on a ground stroke that just missed the tram line to make it 6-5, to take the tiebreaker and their third win as a team.

Kandakai's aggressiveness at the net and Torres' consistency at the base line were the two biggest factors in the comeback, especially as Kandakai was able to step in front of multiple CUI returns to punch the ball away for easy points in the tiebreak.