ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla. – Under the scorching hot Florida sun, Azusa Pacific avenged last year's round of 16 defeat against Nebraska-Kearney with a 4-2 victory in a nearly four-hour battle, equaling the program's best-ever result by reaching the quarterfinal round of the NCAA Division II Women's Tennis National Championships on Wednesday afternoon at Sanlando Park.
 
No. 10 seed Nebraska-Kearney won the first set on four of the singles matches, meaning the No. 7 Cougars would need to come back on at least one of those courts, and Stina Larsson provided the decisive comeback with a 5-7, 6-2, 6-2 victory at No. 3 singles.
 
"I was nervous before the match because of the heat, because I knew it would be tough," Larsson said after the match. "Shannele faced her last year and told me that she makes a lot of balls and doesn't miss, so that's not the kind of player you want to face in this kind of weather. I was just thinking that I was really tired. I don't think I've ever been that tired before, but that's also because I've never played in this weather before."
 
Larsson fought through the tough conditions and fatigue and ended up controlling the match by the end. After breaking her opponent's serve just once in the long opening set, Larsson earned multiple breaks of serve in each of the next two sets to win the match.
 
The Cougars improve to 21-4 on the season, making this the eighth time that head coach Mark Bohren has led the women's tennis program to at least 21 wins. They are now one win away from tying the program record, and the next match will be against No. 2 seed Nova Southeastern, which advanced easily with a 4-0 win against Slippery Rock. Nebraska-Kearney finishes the season with a 20-6 record.
 
Larsson and Karola Suviste got the Cougars off to a strong start, winning their No. 2 doubles set 6-0 to send an early message. The team's most successful pairing is now 17-5 on the season, snapping a three-set skid.
 
"It was our best match in a very long time," Larsson said. "We got a lot of help from Coach Bohren. He knew what was going on in the match, and his coaching gave me a lot of confidence. The energy from all three doubles really helped us, because even though it was 6-0, it was a tough match."
 
Julia Jordan and Vini Bautista each got off to a strong start in a battle of nationally-ranked doubles teams at the No. 1 position. The 50^th-ranked Cougars led 5-1 against the No. 17 pairing of Narindra Ranaivo and Tanya Midzi. The Lopers won at No. 3 doubles, 6-4, and then won three games in a row at No. 1 doubles to tie that set. The deciding set eventually went to a tiebreaker, where Jordan and Bautista came through with a 7-6(5) win.
 
"Their opponents were hitting a lot of lobs and making the points long, which made it hard for them" Larsson said about the match at No. 1 doubles. "They had match points before the tiebreaker, and it was tied 5-all in the tiebreaker, so there was a lot of high pressure moments in that match, but they were the better team in those moments. The way they came through in the end was very important for us."
 
Shannele Lopez made a strong start at No. 6 singles for the Cougars and won her first set 6-1, but the other five matches were much more complicated at the start. At one point, the Lopers led 4-1 on four different courts, including No. 5 singles. However, Suviste came back at No. 5 to win five games in a row and take the first set 6-4.
 
The Lopers went on to take the opening set at each of the top-4 singles courts. At No. 3 singles, Midzi won four of the last five games to steal the set 7-5, and then No. 35 Ranaivo won 7-6(6) in a long first set at No. 2 singles against Jordan.
 
Lopez continued to control her match and won 6-1, 6-1 to give the Cougars a 2-0 lead. She has now won seven matches in a row for a 14-1 record on the season. That is the second-best winning percentage in program history, trailing only Emily Harris' 19-1 record in 2012.
 
Suviste continued to dominate her No. 5 singles match and won it 6-4, 6-3. Suviste is now 21-2 on the season, becoming just the fourth player in program history to reach 21 singles wins in a season, and she has the fourth-best single-season singles winning percentage behind just Harris, Lopez, and Eleonora Liga.
 
Nebraska-Kearney won at No. 1 and 4 singles with No. 13 Fabiana Gamboa taking her match 6-2, 6-2, while Alexis Bernthal won her rematch with Katherine Nguyen, 6-1, 6-1. That made the overall score 3-2 in favor of the Cougars, but the Lopers led by a set in both remaining matches.
 
Needing either Jordan or Larsson to pull off a comeback to keep the season alive, the senior and freshman both fought back to win the second set. Feeding off each other's momentum, the Cougar duo both broke twice in the deciding set to give the Cougars an insurmountable lead. Eventually, it was Larsson who finished first to clinch the match.
 
"I heard that she won the second set at the beginning of my third set," Larsson said about Jordan. "She was up big when I was done. The girls were cheering a lot, so even though I didn't know the exact score, it gave me a lot of energy to know that she was doing well."
 
Larsson won at No. 3 singles 5-7, 6-2, 6-2 against Midzi. Last year, No. 35 Ranaivo cliched the win for Nebraska-Kearney, but this year, Jordan led her 6-7(6), 6-3, 4-0 when the match was stopped.
 
"We talked a bit about the match last year, just because we knew that some of us would face the same girl, which was the case for Katherine," Larsson said. "For others, we faced someone that one of our teammates faced last year, but they have new players and so do we. The veterans on the team really wanted to win this time. For us as freshmen, we were also really hungry for the win, so I think it helped us that we played them last year. Sometimes when you lose there is something good that comes out of it."
 
For Larsson, the win was her milestone 20th singles victory of her freshman season. It is the first time in 20 years that two Cougars each reached 20 singles wins in the same season with Larsson and Suviste each doing so. The last pair of Cougars to achieve this were Mayu Sato and Bay Daniels in 2005.
 
This is the Cougars third trip to the national quarterfinals, equaling the program's best results from 2019 and 2022. Over the last six seasons, the Cougars have a remarkable 9-5 record in NCAA postseason matches, which ties Hawai`i Pacific for the most wins by a PacWest team in that span. Earlier in the day, Point Loma won its match against Augustana, making this the third time in six years that two PacWest teams have advanced to the national quarterfinals.
 
The quarterfinal match against Nova Southeastern will begin at 9 a.m. ET. The Sharks go into the encounter with a 23-3 record this season. The Cougars and Sharks did not have any common opponents this season. The last time the two teams faced each other was 2016 and the Sharks won in Azusa, 5-1.