In the middle of her third set, Valeria Salazar let out a scream that could have been heard throughout Drumlins Tennis Center.

She had just botched a volley into the net, adding to her woes in a set that had turned sour from the start.

“I think she gained a lot of confidence when she broke me in the first game of the third set,” Salazar said.

The game she was referring to was one in which Salazar had won the first two points.

Both Salazar and senior Breanna Bachini failed to secure points for Syracuse (8-12, 3-11 Atlantic Coast) in singles play on Sunday afternoon despite each taking a set. Their losses contributed to the team’s 5-2 loss against No. 25 Georgia Tech (13-8, 9-5) in its final regular-season match.

Salazar and Bachini both showed promise early on in their matches. For Bachini, it was in the scorecard.

She won her first set 6-1 and took a commanding lead in the second when she held serve to go up 5-1, but then things took a turn for the worse.

Georgia Tech’s Natasha Prokhnevska held serve, and while Bachini fired some strong serves throughout the next game, she was broken to make the score 5-3. The final point of that game came off of a Bachini double fault.

Her opponent held serve again, and Bachini couldn’t capitalize on her second opportunity to serve for the match. Instead, she lost the game despite a 30-0 lead to start.

Bachini said her struggle to close out the match was because some of her shots weren’t the way she wanted them to be, and also because of the emotions of Senior Day.

“(Today) was about tennis but it was also pretty emotional for me out there,” Bachini said. “There was some points where I was thinking during a serve, ‘This is the last serve I’m going to serve in Drumlins.’

“I shouldn’t have let those kind of thoughts get to me, but unfortunately I did.”

Prokhnevska continued a winning streak that extended to six games with her 7-5 victory in the set. She then went on to beat Bachini easily in the third, 6-0.

Bachini said while she felt her play was solid, the problems in the later stages were in her ability to finish points.

“I had the same game plan,” Bachini said, “just certain things weren’t executing the right way.”

Salazar’s lone set victory was her second set. She played well early in the first set with strong groundstrokes, and her opponent, No. 55 Paige Hourigan, became visibly frustrated, at one point dropping her racket after losing a long point.

Salazar wasn’t able to pull out the win as Hourigan won 6-4. But the SU sophomore found more success in the second set, which she won 6-1.

“I was hitting pretty deep,” Salazar said, “…I was basically making everything in.”

Hourigan came out strong as the third set began, taking a 4-1 lead. Now it was Salazar’s frustration that was showing, with vocalizations and the tapping of her racket into the ground after one particular lost point.

Salazar said a lower first-serve percentage and missed returns caused her trouble in the third set.

Head coach Younes Limam said Salazar and Bachini’s situations were not uncommon because of the inconsistent nature of the sport.

“That’s the hard thing about tennis sometimes,” Limam said. “There are so many highs and lows… In a tennis match you always have times where you’re not playing your best and your opponent is stepping up a little bit.”

Published on April 19, 2015 at 4:55 pm

Contact Kevin: kjpacell@syr.edu