Yet another deep NCAA tournament run came to an end on Sunday morning as the No. 14 Cardinal (18-6, 7-3 Pac-12) were finally stopped in their tracks by the No. 7 Georgia Bulldogs (24-6, 13-3 SEC) with a 4-1 loss in the NCAA quarterfinals.
Although Stanford was able to best No. 3 Cal in a huge upset in the round of 16 on Friday, the Cardinal couldn’t sustain the momentum in their matchup with the Bulldogs and failed to reach the NCAA semifinals for the first time in three years.
“We competed until the last point, for sure,” said head coach Lele Forood. “The way it goes these days, every round of the NCAA Tournament and the finals is really quite a battle. You have to be sharp when you need to be sharp. Georgia brought it at us pretty good today.”
Stanford failed to collect the doubles point for the first time all tournament, as the nation’s second-ranked duo of Taylor Davidson and Carol Zhao were defeated for just the fifth time all year in a tough 8-2 loss to Lauren Herring and Ellen Perez, the No. 11 pair in the country. That was quickly followed up by Krista Hardebeck and Lindsey Kostas losing on Court 3 to wrap up the doubles point for the Bulldogs.
“They totally outplayed us in the doubles,” Forood said. “I don’t think that we thought that the match was anywhere near over at that point.”
The match started to get out of hand fairly quickly, though, as sophomore Caroline Doyle, playing at the No. 3 singles spot, dropped a quick 6-2, 6-2 decision to Silvia Garcia, who came into the match ranked 70 spots lower than her in the national polls. The small upset was just Doyle’s third singles defeat of the season and snapped an eight-match winning streak for the sophomore.
Although fellow sophomore Taylor Davidson easily dispatched Perez on Court 2, senior Ellen Tsay, playing in what would end up as her final match for the Cardinal, couldn’t survive a tough third set against her opposition on Court 5, Hannah King, as she dropped a 6-2, 2-6, 6-3 decision that pushed Stanford into a difficult 3-1 hole late, requiring the Cardinal to win all of their remaining singles matches to stay alive.
“Georgia came out really firing and played very well, which continued into the singles play,” Forood said. “That was probably more the story than the doubles.”
Although Zhao, the No. 2 singles player in the nation, was locked in a tight three-set duel with Lauren Herring on Court 1 and actually pulled ahead 3-2 in the final set towards the end, junior Krista Hardebeck faltered at the end of a valiant third-set comeback attempt on Court 4 and eventually suffered a 6-3, 0-6, 6-4 loss to conclude the match.
“They had big hitters and came right at us, from the doubles right into the singles,” Forood said. “We had some catching up to do, and we did catch up, but not quite enough.”
The loss marked just Stanford’s second loss as the lower-ranked team in an NCAA tournament in its last 12 tries, as the Cardinal won the tournament as the No. 12 seed in 2013 and made it all the way to the semifinals last season as the No. 11 seed before dropping a tough 4-3 decision to North Carolina.
Stanford’s six losses this season are the most it has had since it finished 20-6 back in 1983. In a season in which the team essentially had no depth due to difficulties with the incoming class of recruits, the Cardinal shouldn’t be disappointed with their exit from the NCAA tournament this season — with the bar having been set so high due to the team’s recent run of success, it’s often easy to forget that a top-eight finish in the nation is, in the grand scheme of things, a tremendous effort.
And with the talented trio of Davidson, Doyle and Zhao set to make their returns next season, things are still looking up for the Cardinal into the future.
Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dhpark ‘at’ stanford.edu.