Michigan women's tennis comes back to dump Notre Dame, reach NCAA Sweet 16

Ann Arbor — It wasn’t easy, but the Michigan women’s tennis team, the No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament, played gritty and came back from two deficits to reach the Sweet 16.

The Wolverines defeated Notre Dame, 4-2, on Sunday at the Varsity Tennis Center in a second-round tournament match and will host No. 22 Miami (Florida), a 4-3 winner over Florida, on Saturday at 1 p.m. Michigan (28-3) has tied a program record with 20 straight match victories.

Michigan trailed after losing the doubles point and again at 2-1 before getting three wins in singles for the match victory. Piper Charney, playing on court No. 6, clinched the match in a three sets, 2-6, 6-2, 6-3. Jaedan Brown on No. 4, was in a third set after losing the first, 5-7 and winning the second 6-3. She was ahead 1-0 when Charney won.

“I just told them, I don’t think we played our best but when you can be tough like that with all the nerves — I saw a lot of nerves from us today — this can make us better,” Michigan coach Ronni Bernstein said. “We had our backs against the wall, we needed to turn a few matches there, and then Jaedan and Piper getting into third sets was huge for us.”

Julia Fliegner played high-level tennis to even the match, 1-1, with a 6-1, 6-3 victory at No. 3 singles, but Notre Dame regained the match lead, 2-1, with a straight-set win at No. 2. Kari Miller, playing top court for Michigan and ranked No. 5 nationally, earned her 30^th victory of the season with a 6-3, 6-1 win over No. 23-ranked Julia Andreach. This was Miller’s 95th career victory, to move her into the top 10 in Michigan program history.

More: 'Super competitive' Kari Miller leads Michigan women's tennis into NCAA Tournament

Lily Jones playing No. 5 singles gave Michigan a critical 3-2 lead with her gutty performance. Jones trailed 1-4 in the first set, fought off set points and won the tiebreaker (7-3) to take a 7-6 lead.

"That was massive for her to win the first set," Bernstein said.

In the second set, Jones was broken at 3-4 but broke back to make it 4-4, held her serve then got a final break when Yashna Yellayi double-faulted to give Jones the 6-4 win.

“I was just trying to do it for my team,” Jones said of coming back to in the first set. “I do scoreboard watch a lot, so I was like, ‘It has to be me. I have to get it done.’ We had already lost two first sets, and I was like, 'I have to win.'”

Charney said she doesn’t scoreboard watch and goes into a match assuming she has to win. She lost the first set 2-6.

“My mindset was, ‘I’m not playing my best, but I’ve been here before. I can’t afford to lose,’” Charney said.

She took the second 6-2 and built a 5-2 lead in the third with the crowd gathered to watch her match, with Brown, two courts away fighting to a third set. Charney trailed 30-40 at 5-3 on her serve but got the deuce point and won the match when Akara Matsuno’s service return went wide.

“I felt comforted because I had my lead and I thought Jae was playing really well, so that was really helpful,” Charney said. “If Jae had been off the court, I think it would have been totally different.”

After sweeping Chicago State in the first round on Saturday, Michigan found itself needing to find another gear against Notre Dame. It was an effort that may prove helpful going forward in the tournament.

“(This win) reminds us that we still have what made us so confident coming out of indoors because we had to pull out some tough ones there,” Charney said. “But also remember, yeah, there’s pressure because we’re a top-five seed, but it’s still a tennis match.”

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