Ducks Set to Entertain Sooners
02/05/15 | Women's Tennis
EUGENE – The Oregon women's tennis team is set to host No. 34 Oklahoma at noon on Sunday, Feb. 8, at the Student Tennis Center. UO (1-1) looks to get back in the win column and defend their home court against the Sooners (3-1).
BOOMER SOONER
The 34th-ranked Oklahoma Sooners head to Eugene with a 3-1 mark in dual play. The Sooners rattled off three-straight wins to open up the season before falling to No. 58 Arkansas, 4-3, in Fayetteville. OU also dismantled North Texas 7-0 in its season opener.
Oklahoma's roster boasts four players with double-digit wins. The Sooners are led by freshman Lily Miyazaki who has a 13-3 mark in singles and a 4-0 record in dual play. Abbi Melrose, a senior, is right on her tail, checking in with a 12-6 record in singles and 1-1 mark in dual action. Christiana Brigante, another freshman, is tied for third on the team with an 11-8 mark in singles and 3-1 record in dual play. Zita Engbroks rounds out the double-digit winners for Oklahoma with an 11-10 record in singles and 3-1 mark in dual play.
In doubles action, no Oklahoma pair has more than three victories. However, there are five doubles pairs with three victories. The team of Brigante and Engbroks has had more success, relatively, with a 3-0 overall record and 1-0 mark in dual play.
LAST TIME OUT
Despite jumping out to an early doubles lead, Oregon wasn't able to fend off No. 72 Minnesota in singles play and fell 4-3. UO took a 1-0 lead into singles thanks to wins at the No. 1 and No. 2 position. The Golden Gophers, however, regrouped and charged at the Ducks in singles action, winning five of six first sets. Minnesota's charge was too much for the Ducks as the Gophers won four straight to clinch the match, 4-3, before Alyssa Tobita and Marlou Kluiving came away with wins at No. 3 and No. 4 singles, respectively.
KLUIVING CATCHING EYES
Marlou Kluiving is making great strides in her second season with the Ducks. The sophomore leads Oregon with a 10-2 overall mark in singles play and 2-0 in dual action at the No. 4 singles position. She's also 8-2 in her last 10 matches in singles play and undefeated in doubles play (2-0). Her only losses came to Washington State's Elizaveta Luzina who was ranked No. 66 when the two played last October at the USTA/ITA Northwest Regionals and to Sarah Baron of Indiana just three weeks ago.
DYNAMIC DUO
The eccentric freshman pair of Nia Rose and Alyssa Tobita has made a splash in the doubles scene during the tournament season. The duo is ranked 10th in the latest ITA Northwest Regional rankings after going 12-4. Rose and Tobita opened their collegiate careers by capturing the No. 1 doubles division at the WSU Invitational. The pair also made it to the doubles semifinal of the Bulldog Classic, downing Portland State's Peri/Vorster 8-4, but a final was not played.
The two freshmen also have identical records on the singles side at 7-4. Rose reached the finals in the blue singles flight at the Bulldog Classic, but fell to Fresno State's Aishwarya Agrawal 6-3, 6-7 (9-7).
Tobita reached the consolation semifinals in the blue flight and easily dispatched Cal State Stanislaus' Jessica Stokes 6-0, 6-0.
KLUIVING MAKING STRIDES
Marlou Kluiving is enjoying a great start to her sophomore year after compiling an 8-2 mark during the tournament season. The Eext, Netherlands, product looks to continue the trend with the start of the dual season.
SILVERIO SIGNS FIRST RECRUITS
In her first signing class as head coach, Alison Silverio inked a pair of five-star recruits. Silverio first signed Daniella Nasser, who hails from Tampa, Fla. The lefty senior at Academy of Holy Names is a three-time District 10 champion in both singles and doubles as well as a regional champion.
They days later, Silverio inked her second five-star recruit in Rebekah Anderson. Anderson, a lefty like Nasser, hails from La Mirada, Calif., where she is ranked No. 14 in the state and No. 19 in the southwest region and No. 77 nationally according to Tennisrecruiting.net. The SoCal native has had plenty of experiences playing against top 50 players in USTA National events.
SILVERIO ADDS GIANNONI
Less than a month after being named the 10th head coach in Oregon women's tennis history, Alison Silverio announced Tony Giannoni as her assistant coach. Giannoni, a Miami, Fla., native was previously at UCF before joining the Ducks. Silverio and Giannoni have known each other for a while, as they have frequently crossed paths on the recruiting trails.
While with the Knights, Giannoni helped guide them to 14 victories during the 2012-13 season – the most wins in a single season since the 1999-00 season. He also helped freshman Caroline Eberhart reach the 25-win plateau that year, the fourth-best mark in a single season at UCF.
Prior to his time with the Knights, Giannoni spent two seasons with his alma mater, Florida. As a volunteer assistant with UF, the Gators went 24-3 overall – undefeated in SEC play (11-0) – and advanced to the NCAA Final Four in his first season. UF followed up with a sweet sixteen appearance the next year before Giannoni joined UCF.
SILVERIO NAMED 10TH UO WOMEN'S TENNIS HEAD COACH
After an extensive national search, Athletics Director Rob Mullens named Alison Silverio as the 10th women's tennis head coach at Oregon. Silverio arrived in Eugene after spending the past four seasons as an assistant coach at Georgia Tech, her alma mater. She succeeded Paul Reber who stepped down last April after compiling a 77-101 mark over eight seasons at the helm.
Following a stellar playing career that culminated in captaining the Yellow Jackets to the 2007 NCAA National Championship and earning tournament MVP accolades, Silverio has experienced continued success in the coaching ranks, starting with a two-year stint at North Carolina State, where she helped the Wolfpack to a pair of team NCAA appearances in 2008 and 2010, and assisted with bringing in the first top 25 recruiting class in program history (2010).
At Georgia Tech, she helped assemble the No. 1 recruiting class in the nation in 2012, and followed that up with the No. 6 class in 2013. Silverio tutored the top-ranked doubles team in the nation last spring as well as the ITA National Indoor doubles champions and ITA Regional doubles champions in 2013. The Yellow Jackets made NCAA Sweet 16 appearances in 2012 and 2013.
