MOBILE, Ala. -- Landslides aren't the norm in Alabama, but the ACU doubles team of
Jaclyn Walker and
Dina Pavlin ran into one Thursday afternoon at the ITA Small College Championships.
After winning their first match of the tournament earlier Thursday at the Copeland-Cox Tennis Center, Walker and Pavlin were dispatched in Thursday afternoon's semifinals, 6-0, 6-1, by the tournament's No. 1 seed, the duo of Yuan Jia and Seul Ki Chin of BYU-Hawaii.
"That's a really good team we ran into (Thursday)," ACU head coach
Hutton Jones said. "Sometimes you just get caught up in a landslide and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
"What happened to us today didn't happen for lack of effort," he said. "We just never got anything going, and they never let up. We had several games throughout the match where we had control, but we just couldn't put them away."
Jia and Chin will play in Friday's 6 p.m. championship match against the Francis Marion team of Tereza Sykorova and Sabina Baberadova, the No. 2 seeded team in the field.
Walker and Pavlin, meanwhile, will play in the third-place match at 3:30 p.m. as they take on the California (Pa.) tandem of Nina Kowalski and Laurie Navarro.
"Hopefully we can come out (Friday) and play well and get a win," Jones said. "That would be a sweet way to come home."
ACU's team got its day off to a good start early Thursday afternoon when it took out the Wayne State (Mich.) team of Sharon Gill and Milena Vuksanovic, 7-5, 6-4.
