UCLA women’s tennis (16-8, 10-3 Big Ten) is heading to Nashville, Tennessee, for the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. UCLA will face Harvard (15-8, 7-0 Ivy League) in Friday’s first round, with the victor advancing to Saturday’s second round against either No. 15 Vanderbilt (19-6, 11-4 SEC) or Xavier (14-8, 5-1 Big East). The NCAA tournament’s super regional rounds will be played May 10 and May 11 before the quarterfinals, semifinals and title match are played from May 15 through May 18 in Waco, Texas. Daily Bruin Sports’ women’s tennis beat predicts where the Bruins will finish the 2025 dual-match campaign.
Chloe Agas
Staff writer
Prediction: Second-round appearance
Vanderbilt has only dropped one match at home all season.
And if coach Stella Sampras Webster’s squad wants to advance past the opening rounds, it’ll have to hand the Commodores their second.
In its first season without former 2023 NCAA singles champion Tian Fangran, UCLA lost to five top-20 opponents – including Michigan, twice.
The Bruins began the season ranked No. 5 in the country, but failed to earn one of the NCAA’s 16 bids to host a regional.
Last year, the Bruins had home-court advantage from the first round until the quarterfinals. But this time around, UCLA is traveling to Nashville for the first two rounds and will likely head to No. 2 seed Texas A&M for super regionals before even stepping foot in Waco.
The Bruins will have to face the Crimson in the first round of the tournament – a team the program has not faced in 30 years. The Crimson are on a seven-match win streak head into Friday’s match undefeated in conference play.
Should UCLA advance, it will have to face either Xavier – a team it has never faced before – or Vanderbilt, who racked up wins against last year’s defending NCAA champions Texas A&M and No. 13 seed LSU.
Although the Bruins are no strangers to bouncing back from earlier defeats – including a redemption 4-2 win over the Trojans on April 16 – cracks in the lineup remain against top-ranked opponents, evident in their semifinal loss against then-No. 3 Michigan on April 25 when they dropped the doubles point and failed to line up four singles points. Senior Kimmi Hance fell in straight sets on court two, while freshman Kate Fakih lost her first three-set singles match of the season.
And in the unforgiving environment of the NCAA tournament, those cracks may prove costly.
Willa Campion
Daily Bruin contributor
Prediction: Semifinals appearance
What makes the national tournament so fun to watch is that all 64 teams have a shot. Call it March Madness or May Mayhem, no quest for a national title ever goes unmarred by upsets.
And this year, all the elements are there for the Bruins to be the team to cause the chaos.
UCLA has four singles players in the top 85, as of April 22’s rankings – a statistic shared by only eight other teams. And in doubles, the Bruins are the sole team in the nation with two pairs ranked in the top 15.
No. 11 freshmen Olivia Center and Kate Fakih may have fallen in their last doubles match against Michigan’s then-unranked Julia Fliegner and Elise Miller. But the tandem, who have been playing together since they were in elementary school and were the runners-up in the fall NCAA doubles championships, have chemistry on the court that can’t be replicated.
UCLA will face Harvard in the first round of the tournament. The Crimson, whose competitors in the Ivy League aren’t nearly as fierce as those in the Big Ten, should be an easy win for the Bruins.
Where UCLA is likely to face its first real challenger is in the second round against No. 15 Vanderbilt, assuming the latter bests Xavier. All that separates the Bruins from breathing down the Commodores’ necks in the national rankings is one team.
While Vanderbilt lucked out by being named hosts by the NCAA committee, there is no guarantee fortune will be in its favor on the court. The Bruins’ singles depth, most recently championed by No. 62 Elise Wagle in her victory over Michigan’s then-No. 41 Lily Jones, and season-long doubles dominance will be hard to beat.
A victory from UCLA on Saturday will send it to the super regionals, almost undoubtedly against No. 2 Texas A&M. Now, I know it sounds a little crazy to predict a team outside the top 15 will topple the second-best squad in the nation. But Vanderbilt did just that March 16 without even winning the doubles point.
So if you ask me what team will stop the Bruins on the road to Waco, it’s not the defending national champions, but the Wolverines – the most likely winners of the northeast side of the bracket and the same team that knocked Stella Sampras Webster’s squad out of the Big Ten tournament.
Michigan is entering the NCAA tournament after fumbling its first Big Ten trophy in four years. And if I had to guess, the Wolverines did not take that lightly, especially since it was their rivals, the Buckeyes, who snatched it away.
The maize and blue will enter the championships with something to prove and the talent to back it up, enough to end a Bruins tournament run for the second time in less than a month.
Lori Garavartanian
Daily Bruin contributor
Prediction: Super regionals appearance
The last time UCLA lost to a team not in the nation’s top 25, I was studying for my winter quarter finals.
Since that March 1 loss to San Diego State, UCLA has lost exactly five games, all to teams ranked No. 18 in the nation or higher.
That is to say, I feel rather confident UCLA will get out of the first round, beating a Crimson team that is ranked 73rd in the nation by the ITA.
The Bruins have not played the Crimson in 30 years. But they’ve also never lost to the Crimson, winning three separate matchups between 1988 and 1995.
The first true barrier then comes in the form of Vanderbilt, who will face unranked Xavier in its first-round matchup.
Vanderbilt and UCLA could not be much closer in national rankings – sitting at No. 15 and No. 17, respectively.
The Bruins latest loss in the Big Ten tournament to then-No. 1 seed Wolverines does not evoke much confidence, but neither does the Commodores’ loss to No. 7 Auburn in the SEC tournament.
UCLA has spent the entirety of the last month holding off back-to-back losses, a phenomenon it’d fallen into the pattern of, registering three across the course of the season. Its hard work will not lead them astray, and although the going will be hard, UCLA will beat Vanderbilt 4-3 to advance to the super regionals.
However, the team’s likely opponent is No. 2 Texas A&M, whose hardest possible opponent in the first two rounds ranks thirty spots below them.
No. 62 senior Elise Wagle, the Bruins’ standalone point winner against the Wolverines, is on a 12-match singles undefeated streak, taking down three nationally ranked players throughout the season. Her performance is likely to carry the Bruins to a point – the only point they’ll get all match long.
Already 0-2 against SEC teams this season, the Bruins’ campaign will end with a third 4-1 in the super regionals.
Shiv Patel
Daily Bruin senior staff
Prediction: Second-round appearance
The doubles point sets the stage for a dual match. It gives one side a leg up entering singles play – and it forces the other to win an extra duel.
And in Ojai, UCLA dropped its first doubles point in ten matches to then-No. 3 Michigan, leading the former to crash out of the Big Ten tournament.
The then-No. 9 pairing of freshman Olivia Center and Kate Fakih lost last weekend to Michigan’s Julia Fliegner and Elise Miller – a then-unranked duo. The doubles pair that had gone 15-5 on the dual match trail faltered, leaving UCLA without the doubles point as it entered singles play.
And the Bruins couldn’t recover.
UCLA will face Harvard on Friday – a team that has dropped its last two doubles points and has no ranked doubles teams. It’s reasonable to expect that the Bruins will be able to coast to the second round.
But it doesn’t take an expert to see UCLA running into doubles troubles against No. 15 seed Vanderbilt.
No. 9 duo Célia-Belle Mohr and Sophia Webster will likely headline the Commodores’ lineup against the Bruins if both teams make it to Saturday. Given UCLA’s stumble out of the gates against Michigan, all signs point to the hosts giving UCLA a run for its money in the match’s first point.
And if the Bruins’ 0-4 record when losing the doubles point is any indication, they won’t be able to string together the four singles matches to survive onto the tournament’s third round.
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