No. 35 Lions Come From Behind to Defeat UNLV 4-2

Thursday, March 21

Las Vegas, Nev.

10:00 AM

Columbia University

UNLV

Photo by: Columbia University Athletics/Mike McLaughlin

No. 35 Lions Come From Behind to Defeat UNLV 4-2

3/21/2019 7:55:00 PM | Women's Tennis

Match Boxscore (PDF)

Lions win 10th consecutive victory, need one more win to tie school-record for longest win streak; Christie Wan, Akanksha Bhan, Andrea Kevakian and Melissa Sakar all win singles matches.

LAS VEGAS, Nevada—The No. 35 ranked Columbia women's tennis team claimed its 10^th consecutive win as it came-from-behind to defeat host UNLV 4-2 Thursday afternoon at the Frank and Vicki Fertitta Tennis Center.

With the Spring Break victory, Columbia improves to 10-1 on the year, while UNLV drops to 9-6. The victory also puts Columbia in position to tie its school-record for longest win streak with a win tomorrow vs. UT San Antonio. Previously, Columbia won 11 consecutive matches from Feb. 28-April 13, 2014.

UNLV grabbed the lead as it claimed the doubles point by winning two out of three doubles matches. Aiwen Zhu and En-Pei Huang, the nation's No. 48 ranked doubles team topped sophomore Christie Wan and senior Andrea Kevakian 6-2 at No. 1 singles. After Columbia first-year Akanksha Bhan and first-year Melissa Sakar teamed to win 6-4 over UNLV's Connie Li and Samantha Li at No. 2 doubles, UNLV's Izumi Asano and Anna Bogoslavets claimed a hard-fought 7-6 win at No. 3 doubles over Columbia sophomore Jennifer Kerr and senior Sarah Hu.

The Lions came back in singles. Kevakian registered a dominating 6-2, 6-0 win at No. 5 singles over UNLV's Alex Kalachova. Then Sakar won a convincing 6-3, 6-3 victory at No. 4 singles over UNLV's Bogaslavets for a 2-1 Lion lead. UNLV's Zhu, the nation's No. 96 ranked singles player won a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Kerr at No. 1 singles to tie the match back at 2-2.

But it was all Columbia the rest of the way. At No. 2 singles, Bhan rallied from behind to win a 2-6, 7-5, 6-0 No. 2 victory over UNLV's Izumi Asano. The win gave Columbia a 3-2 lead. Then Wan came back to clinch the team win with a 3-6, 6-2, 6-1 win at No. 3 singles over Huang at No. 3 singles.

Columbia takes on UT San Antonio tomorrow at UNLV. First-serve is at 10 a.m. MT/Noon ET. The Lions open Ivy League competition at Cornell on March 30.