LAS VEGAS – It will be an all-Bruin affair in the singles final of the Freeman Memorial Championships, as Jada Hart and Ena Shibahara each advanced in straight sets Saturday. The second day of competition at the Fertitta Tennis Complex on the campus of UNLV was jam-packed—especially for Hart and Shibahara, who also advanced to the semifinal of the doubles tournament.
Sunday's singles final time is still to be announced, while the doubles semis will being at 10 a.m. Hart-Shibahara will take on host UNLV's team of En-Pei Huang and Aiwen Zhu.
Following her first-round bye as the tournament's top seed, No. 16 Shibahara has cruised through her first three matches in straight sets. The sophomore earned her first win against UNLV's Anna Bogoslavets, 6-3, 6-0, before topping North Carolina's Alexa Graham in Saturday's quarters, 6-1, 6-2. Saturday's semifinal match pitted Shibahara against teammate and No. 46 Abi Altick, who was coming off a three-set comeback win, 2-6, 6-3, 6-3, over No. 21 Vladica Babic of Oklahoma State. Shibahara ultimately proved too much for her Bruin teammate, dispatching her in straights, 6-1, 6-2.
Hart, ranked No. 119 by Oracle/ITA, pulled off two impressive upsets on Day 1 of play. The redshirt sophomore took down No. 32 Petra Granic of Texas Friday morning, 6-3, 6-3, before returning in the afternoon to defeat No. 69 Caroline Lampl in an epic battle, 6-7, 7-5, 7-5. With a second wind, the Colton, Calif. native coasted through Saturday's wins—6-1, 6-0 over Izumi Asano of UNLV and 6-1, 6-4 over Victoria Emma of Florida—to reach the final.
Altick defeated Zhu in her first-round match, 6-1, 6-4, before topping Oklahoma State's Sofia Blanco, 6-4, 7-5. That set up her upset victory over Babic and a semifinal trip. Senior and No. T100 Terri Fleming earned a win over Huang, 6-2, 7-6, before falling to 18th-ranked and second-seeded Jessie Aney of North Carolina, 6-4, 6-4.
Hart and Shibahara, ranked No. 7 in the nation, defeated the Texas team of Petra Granic and Mara Perez-Mur in Friday morning's first round, 6-2. Twenty-four hours later, they were back at it, this time against Oklahoma State's duo of Marina Guinart and Katarina Stresnakova. The Cowgirls challenged the Bruins, but Hart-Shibahara proved too strong, 7-5.