Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Riffice ousts No. 2 seed; Maltby also in NCAA quarters

   Florida's Sam Riffice, who grew up in the Sacramento suburb of Roseville, stunned second-seeded JJ Wolf of Ohio State 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 today to reach the quarterfinals of the NCAA Singles Championships in Orlando, Fla.
   Advancing to the women's quarters was Felicity Maltby of Texas Tech. The senior from Sunnyvale in the San Francisco Bay Area eliminated Petra Melounova of Hawaii 7-5, 6-0 in a matchup of unseeded players.
   Melounova, a junior from the Czech Republic, serves underhand because of a lingering shoulder injury.
   Wolf, a quarterfinalist in the $100,000 Fairfield (Calif.) Challenger last October, suffered only his second loss of the season. He was coming off a 4-6, 6-2, 7-5 victory over Matej Vocel of Oklahoma State on Tuesday.
   The unseeded Riffice, the Southeastern Conference Freshman of the Year who now lives in Orlando, is scheduled to play seventh-seeded Aleksandar Kovacevic of Illinois on Thursday. Kovacevic, a junior from New York, advanced when unseeded Bar Botzer of Wake Forest withdrew with a foot injury.
   Maltby will face North Carolina's Cameron Morra, a freshman from Rockville, Md., who topped Elysia Bolton of UCLA 6-7 (1), 7-6 (6), 6-2 in a battle of unseeded players.
   In the second round of men's doubles, third-seeded Nuno Borges and Strahinja Rakic of Mississippi State routed unseeded Jacob Brumm and Yuta Kikuchi of Cal 6-1, 6-2.
   Tennis Channel will televise the men's and women's singles quarterfinals beginning at 1 p.m. PDT.

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