A confident Arkansas Lady Razorback tennis team is hopeful it can advance to the championship rounds of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1998.

The 46 th-ranked Wake Forest Demon Deacons are the first obstacle standing between No. 17 Arkansas and the championship rounds. Beating the Demon Deacons in Friday’s first round of the NCAA Regional at Chapel Hill, N. C., will pit the Lady’Backs against either No. 14 North Carolina or South Carolina State Saturday in the second round.

The winner of the fourteam regional advances to the Round of 16 next Thursday in Tulsa. An eight-match losing streak accompanies third-seeded Wake Forest into the tournament, but fourth-seeded South Carolina State has the longest odds of advancing.

The Bulldogs will have to get past top-seeded North Carolina, the tournament host, in the first round. The Tar Heels boast three players inside the top 95, led by ninth-ranked Sanaz Marand.

ADVERTISEMENT

Arkansas earned a regional bid in 2006 but didn’t advance. Senior Audrey Bordeleau said this time the Lady’Backs have higher aspirations.

“ We are very excited and thrilled about going to North Carolina, ” Bordeleau said. “ This is our second time in this tournament. When I went as a sophomore, we barely got in and it was just great to be there. This year we’re going in with a different mindset. We know what it’s like and how it works.

“ We’re going there to win the first and second round and make it to Tulsa and go as far as we can. The sky’s the limit for us this year. We can accomplish great things. ”

Bordeleau and Maryori Franco are the Lady’Backs ’ lone seniors. Arkansas coach Michael Hegarty credited the duo and juniors Nanar Airapetian and Ela Kaluder and Aurelija Miseviciute, the topranked singles player in the country, for the program’s success. He hopes future recruiting classes can equal the first-place SEC West finish that his current charges orchestrated this year.

“ We’re losing some good players this year, ” Hegarty said. “ We’re going to lose some good players again next year. Those five players have been primarily responsible for bringing our program up a number of levels. We’re obviously really proud of what they’ve done.

“ We’ve just got to make sure that our next cycle of players that we lose after that are going to be responsible for some more really great things. ”

After starting the spring season with four straight wins, Arkansas suffered as many one-point setbacks in succession during a demanding nonconference schedule in February. Arkansas fell 4-3 to No. 2 UCLA, No. 8 USC, No. 12 Fresno State and No. 16 William & Mary. Rather than dispiriting the team, Hegarty said the losing streak had the inverse effect.

“ That would be a time when you might think that there would need to be some serious counseling going on, but there really wasn’t that much needed, ” Hegarty said. “ I don’t think anybody was too far off the side of the road. Everybody understood that we were inches away from being maybe top five in the country.

“ I think that everybody was extremely motivated at that point. We had a huge amount of tennis left. We hadn’t even begun to play our SEC schedule. Everybody kept a good attitude about that. We didn’t have to really pull anybody out of the ditch. ”

Arkansas posted a 10-3 record after running the gauntlet in February, finishing the season with a 15-9 overall record and a 7-4 conference mark. Fourstraight wins in March over No. 20 Vanderbilt, No. 15 Kentucky, No. 20 Tennessee and No. 6 Georgia inspired confidence the Lady’Backs can draw on this weekend. “ We’ve played all the best teams and we’ve proven we can beat them, ” Bordeleau said. “ We’re one of the top teams too, so I think we’re prepared and ready to go. ”

Miseviciute in SI Miseviciute has been selected to appear in the “ Faces in the Crowd ” section of the May 12 issue of Sports Illustrated. Miseviciute is currently ranked No. 1 overall in singles by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association with a 47-4 overall record for the season, tying the all-time mark by a men’s or women’s tennis student-athlete at Arkansas. Last week she was named the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Women’s Tennis Singles Championships, which will begin on May 21 in Tulsa, Okla. The native of Klaipeda, Lithuania has also garnered much attention off the court for her great academic accomplishments. The Southeastern Conference named her Scholar-Athlete of the Year to go along with a unanimous All-SEC First Team selection. Lady Razorback Communications contributed to this article.