April 23, 2008

Complete Release in PDF Format

Purdue will play host to the 2008 Big Ten Women's Tennis Championship this weekend with matches beginning on Thursday, April 24, and continuing through Sunday, April
29.

The opening day of the tournament will feature six schools with No. 8 Minnesota and No. 9 Purdue leading things off at 9 a.m. ET. No. 6 Michigan State will then battle No. 11 Wisconsin at Noon ET. To conclude the opening round, No. 7 Iowa will face No. 10 Penn State, beginning at 3 p.m. ET.

The five top seeds all have first-round byes and will begin their portion of the championship on Friday. No. 1 Northwestern, No. 2 Michigan and No. 3 Indiana will play thewinners of Thursday's matches. No. 4 Illinois and No. 5 Ohio State will face off in the other quarterfinal match.

Northwestern, ranked No. 1 nationally by the ITA, is looking for its 10-consecutive Big Ten Championship this weekend. The Wildcats were a perfect 10-0 in conference play and finished the regular season with an overall dual record of 23-1. Individually, NU's Maria Mosolova is ranked fourth, and teammate Georgia Rose is ranked eighth in the nation by ITA.

In last year's event, Michigan fell to Northwestern in the championship match. The No. 2-seeded Wolverines will be led this year by Chisako Sugiyama, who is currently ranked No. 49 in singles play by the ITA. In all, seven Big Ten athletes are ranked in the ITA top 125 singles, four pairs rank in the top 60 doubles and five teams fall in the top 50.

This year's event will be broadcast nationally by the Big Ten Network. The network will air the championship match on tape delay on Sunday, May 4, at 4 p.m. ET.