CARY, N.C. – In a rematch of their regular-season contest, the 20th-ranked California women's tennis team fell to seventh-ranked Virginia in a tightly contested 4-0 quarterfinal match in the ACC Championship on Friday at Cary Tennis Park.
 
The Golden Bears – who defeated the Cavaliers 4-1 on March 21 on the road – ended their conference tournament run with a 13-8 record. The Cavaliers (19-4) advanced to the semifinals.
 
The race to the doubles point was close. On court two, Cal's Berta Passola Folch and Greta Greco Lucchina fell 6-4 to the 51st-ranked pair of Martina Genis Salas and Annabelle Xu, the older sister of Cal freshman Naomi Xu. Virginia took the doubles point when Blanco Pico Navarro and Sara Ziodato upended Lan Mi and Naomi Xu 6-4 on court three. Court one featured a battle of top-five teams with Cal's fourth-ranked Jessica Alsola and Mao Mushika facing Virginia's top-ranked Elaine Chervinsky and Melodie Collard. In the March 21 meeting between the teams in Charlottesville, Virginia, the two Bears beat Collard and Chervinsky 7-6(4). But this time the match was abandoned with the score 6-6 when the doubles point was decided.
 
In singles, Naomi Xu lost to Collard 7-5, 6-2 on court six and then Passola Folch fell to Genis Salas 6-2, 7-6(3) on court four to make the score 3-0. With a pair of matches moving into third sets and 43rd-ranked Mi close to winning on court three, Virginia completed its win over the Bears when 33rd-ranked Chervinsky beat 49th-ranked Alsola 7-5, 6-4 on court two.
 
"The whole match was extremely close," Cal head coach Amanda Augustus said. "We were within a couple of points of Virginia in the doubles on all the courts, and there were a lot of deuce points and close games. It was a very high-level match. Credit to Virginia - they competed hard and so did we. They were seeded slightly higher than us, but that match could've gone either way.
 
"This was our first go-around at this tournament. We held our seeding and did what we were supposed to do. The NCAA tournament is coming up soon and now we turn our attentions to preparing for that."
 
Cal awaits the April 28 NCAA Championship selection show to learn its postseason fate.
 
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