Griz head south to face Utah and Cincinnati in Salt Lake

The Montana women's tennis team returns to action this week, staring down perhaps the toughest pair of matches of the year as the Griz travel to Salt Lake City to take on Utah and Cincinnati.

UM opens the weekend's challenging dual slate against the Utes on their home court Saturday evening, with opening serves from the Eccles Tennis Center going up at 4 p.m. Utah will provide live scoring and a live stream of Saturday's match, with links available at GoGriz.com.

After a short turnaround, the Griz will face the Bearcats in a neutral site dual starting at 9 a.m. Sunday morning in a first-ever meeting between the two programs. No live coverage of that match will be available.

Montana heads to Salt Lake sitting 0-3 on the season following a tough road trip to Eastern Washington in mid-January before the spring semester started at UM.

The Griz dropped a pair of 7-0 decisions to Washington State in Pullman and Gonzaga in Spokane to start the trip before falling to Seattle University 4-3 in a neutral site match.

But since then, Montana has turned the focus inward with a two-week training block that has allowed the Griz to fine-tune their game before heading to Utah.

"We're feeling good. It's pretty rare that we get this much time to ourselves during a regular season," said head coach Steve Ascher.

"It was awesome to play those matches and get a lot of information. I feel like we really zeroed in on some ideas. So, I'm excited to play now because I feel like they've really gotten two or three concepts that we really wanted to hammer home. So, we're excited to get back to playing again."

In Montana's limited outings this spring, the Griz have won just three total team points. Grace Haugen and Hailey Murphy won on court one doubles, and Lauren Dunlap and Rosie Sterk won on court three to clinch the doubles point for UM against Seattle.

Junior Ivayla Mitkova took one of two singles wins against Seattle, giving up only one game against Shuanghu Huang in a 6-0, 6-1 victory on court six.

SCOUTING THE UTES: Utah enters the weekend at 3-2 on the season, coming off a pair of losses at the ITA Kickoff Weekend in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where they fell 4-0 to Charlotte and 4-2 to Maryland.

The Utes' three wins have all been convincing, and have all been over FCS opponents, with a 7-0 and 5-0 pair of sweeps over Utah Tech and a 7-0 win over Idaho State.

Montana is winless against Utah in recent history, entering the week at 0-7 since 2005 and having not won an individual match in that span.

The Utes are led by fourth-year head coach Ric Mortera, who guided the program to its best spring season in recent history in 2022. That year, Utah went 15-11 overall, 11-5 at home, and went undefeated in 10 straight matches to finish the year ranked No. 52 in the nation by the ITA.

SCOUTING THE BEARCATS: Cincinnati heads to Salt Lake at 1-3 on the season after advancing to the quarterfinal round of the American Athletic Conference championship tournament last season.

The Bearcats started the year with a 4-3 win at Butler and have since dropped three straight, all on the road. Over the weekend of Jan. 21-22, Cincinnati lost at Purdue, 1-6, and a nail-biter at Indiana, 3-4. They then lost at Kentucky 1-6.

With a pair of challenging matches on tap and conference play around the corner, Montana will look to capitalize on improvements made during the two-week hiatus as it prepares for the Big Sky slate.

"I think we're continuing to build. That's the big thing," said Ascher. "We have a couple more weeks before we head to Pocatello to start conference play. So, we're just taking this opportunity after training to play more matches, get more match strength, and get more match experience. This week will be great for that."

UP NEXT: After another bye week, Montana returns to the road for a triple-header in Lewiston, Idaho, with two matches against Lewis-Clark State and a one-off against Whitman.

Griz head south to face Utah and Cincinnati in Salt Lake

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Players Mentioned

Lauren Dunlap

Grace Haugen

Ivayla Mitkova

Hailey Murphy

Rosie Sterk

University of Montana Athletics