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Blau, Gough touch off 3rd championship of the year

Winning the Pacific-10 Conferences doubles championship, sophomore Lindsay Blau and junior Michelle Gough put together four straight wins last weekend in Ojai, Calif. The championship gives the duo a better outlook for the upcoming NCAA tournament the weekend of May 26-28.

"That'll give them a lot of confidence for the rest of the tournament," assistant coach Kevin Epley said.

After opening with a first round win versus Washington's Iiona Kordonskaya and Zeta Wagener 8-2, the UA duo knew California's Karoline Borgensen and Amy Jensen would be worthy opponents.

"We knew we were playing a great team. They are top five in the country," Blau said.

Shaking off opening match jitters, Blau and Gough led 8-7. Unable to finish them off, the Cal women tied them, forcing a tie-breaking set. Letting Kordonskaya and Zeta back into the match, Blau and Gough were motivated to dominate the extra set.

"We were thinking, 'You know what, this is crap,'" Gough said. "We got fired up and we started competing really well to our best ability."

Winning the set 7-5 and the overall match 9-8, the duo got through UCLA's Elizabeth Schmidt and Abigail Spears 6-4, 6-3 in the semifinals. The deciding factor in the win was the Blau and Gough's tournament experience.

"It was a closer match then it looked," Blau said. "They are very good but we had more experience than them.

On Nov. 14, Blau and Gough won the Rolex Regionals tournament in Irvine, Calif. In February, the duo got to match point in the finals of Rolex National Intercollegiate Indoor Champions in Houston.

Getting into the Pac-10 finals against Southern California's Tiffany Bryner and Kara Warkentin, each side had seen each other three times in the season.

In November, Blau and Gough beat the Trojan twosome 8-3 in the semifinals of Rolex Regionals. In conference play on Jan 29, Bryner and Warkentin turned the tables in the season series, in Tucson, 8-4. On March 10, Blau and Gough got their second victory, defeating them 8-4.

In the opening three games of the first set of the championship, Warkentin's nerves prevented her from focusing.

"She couldn't even hit the ball, so we hit it to her," Gough said.

Capitalizing on the mental error, Blau and Gough held them off in the first set 6-4. However the intensity caught up to the UA pair as they fell in the second set, 3-6.

"Then we got nervous, closing out the first set and we played nervous in the second set," Gough said.

At the intermission, head coach Brad Dancer did not give the girls any advice, leaving them to coach themselves.

"Brad left us alone and let us do our own thinking," Blau said.

The non-coaching strategy paid off as the two talked about the new game plan. Coming to an agreement, they outlined their new goal.

"We needed to hang and stay in the match," Gough said. "We knew if we prolonged this, (we'd) win."

Down 5-4, the UA team began their comeback. Tied at five and with Gough serving, they easily won the game, the turning point of the match

They went on to clinch the championship, 7-5 in the final set and running their all time record against the USC duo to 3-1. As the two teams departed from the court, the tense atmosphere was apparent to Blau.

"They were very bitter," she said. "Hopefully we'll play them again and beat them bad."

After the tremendous run, the two are exhausted. Returning early in the morning on Monday, they didn't go to class, spending the entire day studying. They also didn't practice yesterday, resting for the upcoming NCAA regional tournament this weekend.

"We were running on adrenaline," Gough said. "I feel pretty good, but it was a pretty tiring tournament."