Day one of the Pac-12 tournament is in the books, and ASU tennis started off with a bang.
Seniors Desirae Krawczyk and Ebony Panoho have advanced into the quarterfinals after each winning back-to-back matches as play began Thursday. It marks the third consecutive year that Krawczyk has made it to the quarterfinals, while Panoho is representing ASU in singles play for the first time in her career.
Krawczyk earned the eighth seed in the singles draw of 32, and faced off against Alaina Miller of UCLA to start the day. Although she had to rally in the second set, Krawczyk would take the match fairly easily, 6-4, 6-4.
After about a two hour break, Krawczyk was back on the court to take on Shayne Austin of Arizona. Not a week after defeating Arizona in the final match of the regular season, ASU's top player would eliminate Austin 6-2, 6-0 to move on to her third straight quarterfinals.
Panoho used a couple of straight set victories of her own en route to her quarterfinals appearance. She opened up tournament play with a 6-0, 6-0 shutout win over Utah's Brianna Turley. Panoho then followed it up with the upset of the day, taking down five seed Taylor Davidson of Stanford. Davidson came into the weekend ranked 40th in the latest ITA singles poll.
Junior Kassidy Jump also represented ASU in the singles tournament. Jump began with a 6-1, 6-1 win over Utah's Sarah Richter in her first round matchup. The second round wouldn't go quite as well for Jump as she suffered the Sun Devils' lone loss of the day to Catherine Harrison of UCLA. Harrison is the three seed in the tournament and is currently ranked 17th nationally.
Krawczyk and Panoho will each continue play Friday in the quarterfinals. Krawczyk will go up against a familiar opponent in Cal's number-one seeded Megan Manasse. The two faced off on March 4, a 6-4, 7-5 win for Manasse. Panoho will do battle with fourth-seeded Giuliana Olmos from USC, who comes in sporting a national ranking of 24.
Both Panoho and Krawczyk will also take part in doubles as first round play opens up Friday. Panoho will team up once again with junior Alexandra Osborne as they take on Colorado's top pairing of Jeannez Daniel and Nurla Ormeno Ruiz. Krawczyk and fellow senior Stephanie Vlad were also selected for doubles play as part of the draw committee's five extra participants.
First round doubles action is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m., while singles play resumes for the quarterfinals at 10:30 a.m.
Reach the reporter at mfaye@asu.edu or follow @mattGfaye on Twitter.
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