Xavier University of Louisiana's Lailaa Bashir won two singles matches Friday - including an upset of the No. 3 seed - to reach the semifinals of the ITA Cup tennis championships.
The sophomore won 6-2, 6-4 in the first round (round of 16) against Nicole Christiansen of St. Francis (Ill.), then defeated third-seeded Lisa Khamassi of Keiser 6-3, 2-6, 6-3.
Bashir will play Georgia Gwinnett's second-seeded Yalyzaveta Velykorodna, a freshman, at 9 a.m. EDT Saturday.
Bashir and Angela Charles-Alfred, the defending champion of ITA Cup NAIA and small college doubles, won 6-0, 6-1 in the round of 16 against McPherson's Polina Khoroshevskaya and Erica Paradise. Bashir and Charles-Alfred will play in the quarterfinals at 1 p.m. Saturday against unseeded Natasha Mesa and Maria Way of Tennessee Wesleyan.
The XULA women won 4-of-5 matches on the opening day of the tournament. Kyra Akinnibi was 5-all in the first set against No. 1 singles seed Maria Genovese of Georgia Gwinnett before losing 7-5, 6-3, but Akinnibi won 6-2, 6-0 in her first consolation match against Brenau's Peeraya Charoensirisutthikul.
The XULA men lost all three of their matches. Third-seeded Santiago Perez dropped both his singles matches, then Perez and Shaikh Abdullah lost to Georgia Gwinnett's top-seeded doubles team, Valentino Caratini and Federico Bonacia.
Posted By: Reginald Culpepper
Friday, October 16th 2020 at 8:01PM
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