Collegiate Times

The Virginia Tech women's tennis team will face a quick turnaround after falling to the Thundering Herd at Marshall on Wednesday, as it'll host ACC guests Duke and North Carolina this weekend.

The Hokies will face off against No. 7 Duke at Burrows/Burleson Tennis Center on Saturday at noon and No. 15 North Carolina on Sunday at 9 a.m., as No. 56 Virginia Tech (14-10) will attempt to rebound forcefully from a 4-3 upset road-loss.

"Hopefully we can bounce back from it. It was not a good loss," said Tech head coach Terry Ann Zawacki-Woods. "The team did not play like the same team that's been playing this year, so we need to regain our focus ... and not have any lapses in our performance."

The Hokies will have less than 24 hours to do just that, and -- perhaps more importantly -- to improve upon their 2-7 ACC record before next week's conference tournament.

"We have to start (improving tournament seeding)," said junior No. 5 starter Jessica Brouwer. "But you can't look ahead too far. You have to first win the first one to look at the second one, and we just have to approach it match by match."

Zawacki-Woods projects that there's a 70 percent chance that Tech will trot out its regular six starters at singles, which would include:

Inga Beermann (18-15) at No. 1, Yasmin Hamza (15-8) at No. 2, Jessica Long (21-11) at No. 3, J.J. Larson (13-17) at No. 4, Brouwer (15-15) and Holly Johnson (24-10) at No. 6.

The same goes for doubles, and the singles starters usually comprise the doubles squad as well, with Brouwer/Larson at No. 1, Hamza/Long at No. 2, and Beermann/Johnson as the final doubles squad.

At No. 2, Hamza and Long will face an opponent with whom their coach is very familiar -- Duke's Tory Zawacki -- the younger sister of Zawacki-Woods.

"I'll approach this like with any other opponent, and I'm sure she'll do the same," Zawacki-Woods said.

Against Marshall, the Hokies split the singles matches, but a 2-1 defeat for the singular doubles point would cost them in the end.

However, the Hokies have recovered from heart-wrenching losses rather well as of recent. Toward the end of March, Tech fell to then-No. 12 Miami by a score of 4-3, only to rebound with two consecutive ACC wins.

In a way, Zawacki-Woods looks at this weekend as not only a chance for their two biggest wins of the season, but as an opportunity to tune up for the rapidly approaching postseason.

"We're making too many errors out there right now. That's been one thing that we're going to focus on these next two days, is to not give away any points and make our opponents have to earn them," Zawacki-Woods said.

Tech assistant coach Nicholas Mueller feels that home court could certainly aid this effort against top-notch ACC foes.

"We'd like to think it's a little bit of an advantage," Mueller said. "We're hoping to get a few people out here to watch, and we've had some good support in the past. We're also looking to capitalize on not having to travel ... It's a couple of big opportunities."