April 25, 2010
Box Score | Big Ten Tournament Bracket 
The 52nd-ranked Purdue women's tennis team took down 66th-ranked Minnesota 4-3 Sunday afternoon at the Baseline Tennis Center in Minneapolis, Minn., to tie the program record for single-season wins.
"The team came out fired up in doubles and did a great job," head coach Laura Glitz said. "Minnesota traditionally has very tough doubles, and winning that point gave us momentum going into singles. I was pleased with the way we competed. It is a great way to end the regular season, and now we will get ready for the Big Ten Tournament."
Purdue (16-5, 5-5 Big Ten) opened the match by winning the doubles point for the 14th time this season. Senior Michelle Sammons and sophomore Jennifer Rabot broke Purdue's single-season wins record by a doubles duo with an 8-2 defeat of Alessandra Ferrazzi and Alexa Palen at No. 1. The victory is the duo's 25th this season and broke a tie they held with Ame Onofrey and Amy Fehsenfeld, who won 24 in 1989-90, at the top of the list. Sammons and Rabot also moved into a tie for seventh on the career wins list.
Minnesota (10-13, 3-7) tied the doubles point when Tijana Koprivica and Jackie Sperling earned an 8-5 win over sophomore Anna Dushkina and freshman Imogen Golder at No. 2. The third and final match went into a tiebreak, and junior Bhavani Tirumurti and freshman Imogen Golder swung the critical point for the Boilermakers by outlasting Mariana Spilca and Magdalena Wiecha 9-8 (3).
Purdue came out and won the first three completed singles matches to clinch the team victory. Sammons dispatched of Ferrazzi 6-0, 6-2 at No. 1 to get back on the winning track after her three-match winning streak was snapped Friday. Tirumurti then took down Sperling 6-2, 6-4 at No. 3 before Rabot, the 111th-ranked singles player in the NCAA, provided the clinching win by defeating Koprivica 6-1, 7-5 and improving to 18-3 in dual-match singles play and 26-9 overall in 2009-10.
The Golden Gophers did not quit and claimed the final three contests to provide the one-point margin of victory. Doron Murnavik took a shutout off the table with her 6-2, 6-2 win over Golder at No. 5, and Alexa Palen followed that with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Dushkina at No. 4. Wiecha concluded the match by holding off Pere 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (3) at No. 6.
The win tied the 1982 squad for Purdue's single-season wins record. The six losses are the fewest for the program since the 1980 team finished 10-2 and fourth-fewest in Purdue history behind also the 4-3 record put up in 1976 and the 3-5 mark earned in 1977.
The Boilermakers finished in a three-way tie for fifth in the Big Ten, but were given the sixth seed for this week's conference tournament after the tie was broken. Purdue opens the Big Ten Tournament, held in Iowa City, Iowa, against Penn State at 1 p.m. ET on Thursday.