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Blink, and you’ll miss it. That was the story of Syracuse’s penultimate road match of 2026.

From the top doubles pairing to the bottom half of singles matches, the Orange didn’t stand a chance against Miami the whole evening, and matches ended as quickly as they started.

Friday evening’s contest looked like a track meet for Syracuse as the Orange (6-10, 2-7 Atlantic Coast) fell to the Hurricanes (11-4, 6-2 ACC) 4-0 in under two and a half hours, lightning fast for a dual tennis match. The 28th-ranked Miami team jumped ahead in doubles and shut the door behind Syracuse before they had a chance to respond.

After starting the season on fire and staying in the top 25 of the ITA doubles rankings for the majority of non-conference play, Anastasia Sysoeva and Nelly Knezkova have struggled in doubles play against ACC opponents. Going into Friday, the pair had lost their last three matches, going back to March 8 against SMU.

That streak continued against the Hurricanes as the No. 1 doubles match ended nearly as quickly as it started. Raquel Gonzalez and Sebastiana Scilipoti jumped out to a 4-0 lead in about 10 minutes. While Sysoeva and Knezkova were able to get pair points, it was too little too late as the top pairing for the Orange fell 5-2.

Syracuse head coach Younes Limam shook up the doubles teams again for the Miami match, this time having Emma Scaldalai play with Leena Bennetto for the first time in nearly two months. Similar to the first time they played together against UMass, they played a wire-to-wire match against the Hurricanes’ Sofia Rocchetti and Maria Vargas.

Unlike in the match against UMass, Bennetto and Scaldalai came out on top this time, besting Rocchetti and Vargas 6-4 after trailing for most of the match.

With the doubles point on the line, it came down to the number two slot, owned this year by Serafima Shastova and Monika Wojcik.

The pair played a thrilling match against Dominika Podhajecka and Daria Vosoleva, trading points until, eventually, Miami’s pairing eked out a 5-3 lead. Even that wasn’t safe, though, as Shastova and Wojcik played their way back into the match, eventually tying it at six to send it to a tiebreaker set.

The match didn’t get the epic ending that it had warranted, though. Podhajecka and Vosoleva came into the tiebreaker with a vengeance and dominated the extra set 6-2 to earn the first point for Miami.

Following doubles play, Knezkova was a last-minute scratch for Syracuse, moving Wojcik, Bennetto, and Scaldalai up one slot. This also meant that Constance Levivier was a last-minute substitution in the number six match.

Wojcik and Levivier’s matches were mirror images of each other, both ending in the blink of an eye. While most of their teammates opened up their matches with a point, Levivier and Wojcik were both nearly shut out, losing in straight sets, 6-0, 6-1 to Vosolova and Jaquelyn Owungle, respectively.

With Levivier and Wojcik done, there was nothing they could do but watch as their teammates tried to get Syracuse back into the match, but down 3-0, it was only a matter of time until it would all end.

Miami’s final point came from Aely Arai, who was playing Bennetto. In the first set, Bennetto led by as much as three, but ran out of gas toward the end as she dropped the first set to Arai.

The second set went as the latter half of the first one went. Bennetto had nothing left in the tank and stalled out as she lost 6-1, ending the evening for Syracuse prematurely.

Syracuse’s matches ended so quickly that Sysoeva and Gonzalez didn’t even begin the second set in the number one singles slot. Syracuse looked hopelessly out of its depth against Miami, similar to last weekend’s loss against NC State.

Syracuse has lost several matches by large margins this season, but Friday was by far the most dominant defeat of a disappointing season for the Orange.

Published on April 3, 2026 at 7:43 pm
Contact Jack: jwood20@syr.edu | @JackWood_55