SURPRISE, Ariz. – No. 11-seed Dominican women's tennis fell 5-4 Tuesday in the PacWest Women's Tennis Championships against No. 7-seed Concorida University Irivine in a tightly contested match that saw six tiebreakers at the Surprise Tennis and Racquet Complex.
 
Ghazal Pakbaten and Johanna Keeline grabbed an 8-2 victory on court two to give the Eagles (12-10) the first point of doubles play, but Kaitlyn Nguyen and Alex Wartenberg came through for the Penguins (10-12) with an 8-5 victory on third doubles court to even the match.
 
The top court was a seesaw battle between the two teams. Anastasiia Kuprina and Samantha Schuster held the slim lead most of the way, but Rickimae Torres and Skyler Schaar fended off the CUI pair to tie the match 7-7 and send it to a tiebreaker. Kuprina and Schuster again jumped ahead in the tiebreaker for a 4-2 lead, but Torres and Schaar would not be denied and came back to win five of the last six points for the 8-7 (5) victory.
 
Keeline tied the match up again with a 6-0, 6-1 victory in singles for CUI. Kaitlyn Nguyen answered for Dominican holding off Schuster for the 6-2, 7-6 (0) victory in No. 4 singles. Katherine Jensen held off Savannah Gray in back-to-back tiebreaker sets for the 7-6 (6), 6-4 victory and Ghada Al-Ajeely gave the Eagles a 4-3 lead with a narrow 7-5, 6-1 on the fifth court.
 
The match came down to the top two singles matches. No. 25 Kuprina struck first on the top court holding off Rickimae Torres for a 6-2 set victory, but Torres answered with a 6-4 win of her own in the second set. In the third and deciding set, Torres claimed her first victory over a ranked opponent this season with a dominant 6-1 win for the match.
 
No. 65 Schaar struck first in the final singles match of the day, holding off No. 10 Ghazal Pakbaten 7-6 (4) in the first set. Pakbaten responded with a 6-3 win in the second to force a deciding third set with all of their teammates watching. Neither player could gain an advantage in the third set as they split the first eight games to a 4-4 tie. Schaar took two of the next three to put her a game away from the victory, but Pakbaten staved off elimination and sent the match to a tiebreaker. This time it was Pakbaten that took the tiebreaker 7-4 to win the match for the Eagles.
 
Dominican will play Saturday at 9 a.m. MST against Stanislaus State for seventh place at the Surprise Tennis and Racquet Complex. Live stats will be available.