Facing a second consecutive ranked opponent Saturday and coming off a disheartening defeat to current No. 2 North Carolina, No. 6 Duke could have lost confidence and fallen out of the top 10 with a loss.
Instead, the Blue Devils picked up an impressive win to cement their place among the nation’s best.
Playing outdoors for the first time on a beautiful day at Ambler Tennis Stadium, Duke (9-1) took down No. 7 Michigan, 5-2, behind a dominant singles effort. The Blue Devils dropped the doubles point for the second consecutive match—Duke’s No. 24 doubles team of Reka Zsilinszka and Elizabeth Plotkin shut out its Wolverine opponent, but Michigan (6-3) won the other two matches. In singles, though, Duke dropped only three total sets to get the five points needed for the win.
“Even against North Carolina, we had chances to win four, five, six singles matches, and we knew that we could win the same thing today—four, five, six singles matches,” head coach Jamie Ashworth said. “Losing the doubles point didn’t really affect our mindset in singles, but I think we knew coming off the UNC match that we could beat four singles and we can compete with anyone.”
A change at the top of the lineup spurred the Blue Devils to victory against the Wolverines. Zsilinszka, the No. 34 player in the country, had been playing as Duke’s No. 1 seed, but she lined up in the second slot Saturday. There, she cruised past Michigan’s Rika Tatsuno in straight sets as expected.
The big surprise, however, came at the top spot, where No. 104 Ellah Nze upset No. 16 Denise Muresan, the Wolverines’ best player. Nze, a junior, won the first set in a tiebreak, and sealed the match with a 6-4 second-set win.
“It was great to fight through it and come out with a win against a ranked player,” Nze said. “It’s a great confidence booster for the first time outside.”
Lower down the ladder, Duke won three of four matches to notch the 5-2 victory. Fifth seed Monica Gorny went down in straight sets, but seniors Elizabeth Plotkin and Amanda Granson and freshman Mary Clayton all came out of their matches on top.
After the win over Michigan, the Blue Devils returned to action Sunday against overmatched Furman (3-5) at Ambler. Duke defeated the Paladins 7-0, and no Blue Devil lost more than seven total games in the crushing victory.
Duke used the match against Furman to rotate various players in and out of action. Nze, the hero of the win against Michigan, sat out the contest with the Paladins altogether, and the still-undefeated Plotkin (10-0)—not Nze or Zsilinszka—played No. 1 singles. The result, no matter who played at the top, was the same—another resounding win for Duke.
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