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Women's Tennis Weekly Release

Bulls Earn High Marks at Big Green Invite

For the third consecutive season, a University at Buffalo women's tennis player earned a spot in the finals of Dartmouth University's Big Green Invitational. Sophomore Andreea Novaceanu (Bucharest, Romania/Emil Racovita) played in the championship match of the tournament's A Flight as the Bulls concluded the fall slate. Players representing 18 schools competed in the three-day tournament. Novaceanu, who captured the B Flight title as a freshman last season, fell in the championship match to Harvard's Steph Schnitter in a matchup of the top two seeds in the tournament. In 2002, then-freshman Miglena Nenova (Rousse, Bulgaria/Eurointellect) earned in spot in the B championship to start the UB run at the New Hampshire tournament.

Novaceanu Goes 4-1 Against Strong Opposition

Andreea Novaceanu

Novaceanu, the second seed in the A Flight, began play with a 6-2, 7-5 victory over Stony Brook's Hana Chovanova in the opening round of 32. Her toughest match of the tournament came in the second round as she outlasted Ali Blackett of Southern Mississippi in a third-set super-tiebreaker. Novaceanu dropped the opening set to Blackett, 6-3, before reeling off six straight games to take the second set, 6-0. In the super-tiebreaker, she needed to go beyond the 10-point limit to score the 11-9 victory and move into the quarterfinals.

In the quarterfinals and semifinals, Novaceanu picked up a pair of straight-set wins over seeded opposition. She defeated Cornell's Mollie Edinson, the sixth seed, 6-3, 6-3, in the quarterfinals. In the semifinal contest, Novaceanu knocked off Ohio State's Sonia Ruzimovsky, the third seed, 6-1, 6-4, to set up the championship meeting against Schnitter. Novaceanu was defeated by top-seeded Schnitter in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4, to complete an incredible run as she took four matches in the three-day tournament. Schnitter did not drop a set in the tournament and Novaceanu won the most games, seven, against the Harvard sophomore.

Checking the Stats

At the midway point of the 2005-06 season, Novaceanu leads the Bulls with an 11-3 record through the fall campaign. Senior Kristen Ortman (Amherst, NY/Amherst) is second on the team with an 8-2 singles record. Tina Jacob (Singapore/Raffles JC), expected to be the number six player for the Bulls in the spring went undefeated with a 4-0 mark in limited action. Jacob and Novaceanu and Nenova and Katrin Fischer (Ternitz, Austria/Borg) also turned in perfect 4-0 doubles records in the fall. Jacob and Novaceanu will see action as the number three doubles squad this spring with Nenova and Fischer pairing up at number two. Ortman and Natalie Dean (Feilding, New Zealand/Palmerston North) are expected to be UB's number one pair in the spring season.