It was an expectation.

The team has made the Sweet 16 for seven consecutive years — including the last six, with Amanda Augustus as head coach. The Bears’ regular season, like the six seasons before it, has been nothing more than an opening act for the main event.

“Going to the Sweet 16 is part of the culture on our team,” Augustus said.

On Friday, No. 8 Cal will face No. 9 Alabama, whose team made it to the Sweet 16 for the first time in program history.

For the Bears, the question is still the same as it has been all season: Can they go all the way and deliver Cal its first NCAA championship?

It is not out of the question. As a No. 8 seed, Cal advanced to the title match in 2008 and again in 2009 as the No. 9 seed. Ever since those impressive seasons — Augustus’ first two years as the coach — the Bears have been unable to return to the finals.

As the seeding indicates, the Bears will be the favorite in their matchup against the Crimson Tide. Alabama does not have a singles player on its roster ranked in the top 25, while Cal has both No. 5 Zsofi Susanyi and No. 8 Anett Schutting in the top 10.

The Crimson Tide will be the second SEC opponent that the Bears will play in a row and the second team from the state of Alabama. The Cal squad swept Auburn, 4-0, last Saturday at the Hellman Tennis Complex in Berkeley.

If Cal bests the Crimson Tide (21-5) in Urbana, Ill., on Friday, its path will become much more daunting. The Bears will likely have to face top-seeded Florida on Sunday, should they make it to the Elite 8.

The good news for Cal is that the team has been producing its best tennis now than it has been all season. The Bears (18-5) are riding on an eight-match win streak and have brought home 13 victories in their last 14 dual matches.

“If we’re not peaking now, I don’t know,” Augustus said after the Auburn match. “And it seems as some of our health issues are at a place where we can handle them.”

As late as it is in the season, the Bears are healthiest they have ever been. Cal’s top player, fifth-ranked Susanyi, has been in and out of the lineup with a hip flexor injury. Meanwhile, freshman Klara Fabikova, who plays on the No. 2 court in singles and doubles, was hampered early in the season, along with senior Annie Goransson.

All those players were on the court last weekend and appeared to be at full strength.

“I felt good to be back on the court,” Susanyi said. “I feel like I’m 100 percent, and I’m so excited to play.”

The Bears are ready. As they’ve known all along, their dedication and effort all season have been leading up to this weekend.

“We’ll work hard and prepare as we have all season,” Augustus said. “Now it’s just who wants it more.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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The Bears will also be bringing a good dose of Cal spirit with them.

The team has a tradition unlike any other — when the postseason rolls around, players spray-paint their tennis shoes blue and gold in honor of the university they play for and represent.

“Everyone kind of puts their own spin on it,” says coach Amanda Augustus, whose kicks are also a bright blue and gold. “But it has to be school colors.”

Some choose an electric gold that mirrors the state’s California poppies paired with a true and bright Yale blue — the two sources that the University of California borrowed its colors from. Other players are a little more subtle, preferring a metallic gold that doesn’t catch the eye as much but still stands out on the courts of Hellman Tennis Complex.

Some players take their Cal spirit beyond their footwear. Sophomore Zsofi Susanyi and freshman Klara Fabikova had blue streaks in their normally blond hair last weekend. Each also painted her nails in the university’s colors, alternating blue and gold for each finger.

Even the athletic tape that the players wore this weekend — normally green or pink — was shades of either blue or gold.

But the longest-standing tradition is definitely the shoes. Augustus says that the tradition predates her time as a player for Cal in the late ’90s. Her coach back then — the legendary Jan Brogan, who led the Bears to 25 NCAA appearances — also couldn’t pinpoint an exact date.

“I would be guessing as I coached for 29 years,” Brogan says. “But I can pin it down to the Lisa Albano era.”

Lisa Albano played for Cal from 1988 to 1992, placing the shoe-painting tradition at more than 20 years old.

Augustus carries on the tradition, having her players lay cardboard down on the track in Edwards Stadium so that they can spray paint their shoes. They have to paint a few weeks before the postseason begins, or else the shoes won’t be dry in time.

But the Bears haven’t had to worry about jinxing their postseason chances or painting the shoes prematurely yet — in Augustus’ six seasons as head coach, her teams haven’t missed the postseason once.

Cal’s rivals have caught on to the tradition and have started doing something similar, but the players maintain that the idea originated in Berkeley.

“We did it first,” says sophomore Cecilia Estlander. “USC and UCLA have kind of started doing it, but we did it first.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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But not anymore.

In two of their last three matches of the regular season, the Bears had to make a comeback in singles after dropping doubles matches and finding themselves in early 1-0 deficits. This included doubles losses to opponents like Arizona, who weren’t strong enough to even make the 64-team NCAA tournament.

The Bears’ top duo of Lynn Chi and Anett Schutting seemed to be clicking earlier in the year, when they won five straight doubles matches. But down the stretch, the duo was only 3-4 in their last 7 doubles matches of the season.

Match after match, it seemed like the Bears could only hang on in doubles by a thread and would often have to use their strong singles play to bail themselves out later.

But with their drumming of Auburn, 4-0, on Saturday at Hellman Tennis Complex, that may no longer be the case.

It was no surprise that No. 8 Cal cruised through Stony Brook, 4-0, on Friday. But Auburn, the No. 25 team in the nation, was supposed to give Cal a tougher challenge in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Instead, the Bears dominated and earned a trip to the Sweet 16.

Unlike in their usual sluggish starts in the regular season, the Bears exploded in doubles against Auburn. Tayler Davis and Kelly Chui jumped to an 8-1 win on court No. 3, and Anett Schutting and Lynn Chi — the same duo that was struggling just a few weeks ago — beat the No. 10 doubles team in the country with an 8-3 win on the top court to earn the doubles point for the Bears.

“I thought we were solid,” said Cal coach Amanda Augustus. “And then, on court No. 3, we had a really, really good day. That got us off to a great start.”

The Bears carried that momentum over into singles, where the Cal freshmen rocked Hellman Tennis Complex. Lynn Chi raced to a 6-0, 6-1 finish on court No. 4 to give Cal its second point of the match. Meanwhile, Cal’s other freshman, Klara Fabikova, dominated her opponent in a 6-1, 6-1 route.

The Bears needed just one more point to put the match away.

Seniors Tayler Davis and Annie Goransson were each up five games in their second sets, needing just one more game from either to seal the match for the Bears.

“Me and Annie were kind of in a race to see who would finish first,” Davis said. “(Assistant coach) Cordell was sorta joking with me to see who would finish first.”

Davis was able to beat Goransson in their race to finish off the opponent first, winning 6-3 on her court to give the Bears the four points needed to end the match.

It was a fitting end for the senior captain’s last match in Berkeley.

“I think a couple of them had a look up at the scoreboard and may have deferred to their senior captains a little bit,” Augustus said, smiling. “This is her big day.”

Watch an interview with co-captain Tayler Davis here

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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A week after being swept by No. 5 Oregon State, Cal now has to face No. 13 Arizona State in a weekend series beginning on Friday at Evans Baseball Diamond.

Arizona State (30-14-1, 12-9 in the Pac-12) ranks fourth in the conference and comes in to Berkeley looking to improve its postseason seeding. The surging Sun Devils recently secured their 30th win of the season on Sunday and have now notched 51 consecutive 30-win seasons — the most in NCAA history.

Meanwhile, Cal is floundering. After amassing a 16-12 record through the end of March, the Bears proceeded to go on an eight-game losing streak to begin April — and they haven’t recovered since.

Cal now holds a mediocre 21-26 season record, including 9-15 in the Pac-12, which has left the team in ninth place in the conference. The Bears’ postseason chances are essentially out the window.

Just two years ago, the Bears had a young, promising and star-studded roster: a potential major leaguer in Devon Rodriguez, a star in the making with Andrew Knapp and a standout pitching duo between Justin Jones and Kyle Porter. After a series of misfortunes, most notably Rodriguez’s season-ending knee injury in 2012, Cal’s chrysalis of young talent never blossomed the way the Bears wanted.

Right now, Knapp is still trying to keep Cal’s offensive ship from sinking completely. Knapp currently leads the Bears in batting average, hits, runs and RBIs, but Cal as a whole is only managing a .264 batting average.

The Bears’ subpar pitching is in no way helping Cal’s offense either. A combined ERA of 4.50 from Cal’s pitching staff is letting their opponents hit a .292 batting average off of the Bears. If Cal’s pitchers can’t get it together against Arizona State’s hard-hitting offense — led by outfielder Trever Allen — the Bears are in for a rough weekend.

Meanwhile, Rodriguez is battling injuries once again. In 2012, it was his knee, and now it’s his shoulder. The previous first baseman dislocated his shoulder late in the fall in a scrimmage game and has been limited to the role of designated hitter for most of the season because of it. Rodriguez was once well on his way to becoming an MLB draft pick, but he is now heading toward his fourth year playing in Berkeley for the 2014 season.

Although he has been unable to man his usual post at first base, Rodriguez has been a constant force for the Bears on the offensive end. He is second behind Knapp in RBIs — fighting on despite the need for a shoulder surgery that he will undergo as soon as the season is over.

Against Arizona State, the Bears will need all of their players to be at the top of their form in order to have any hope of winning.

While Cal continues to struggle this season, the team will look to return in 2014 with much of that same roster that took them to the College World Series in 2011.

But by then, they will be older, healthier and maybe better.

Contact Riley McAtee at rmcatee@dailycal.org
Contact Johnny Zhang at jzhang@dailycal.org

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And 16 wins and 5 losses later, the Cal women’s tennis team could be in a position to do just that. As the No. 8 team in the country, the Bears earned the right to host the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament.

And though they were only able to muster a second place finish in the Pac-12, the Bears feel good about accomplishing the goal Schutting set three months ago.

“I like our chances,” said freshman Lynn Chi on Wednesday. “Hopefully, we can go all the way. I like our chances for that.”

The Bears (16-5) are prepared to steamroll through this first leg of the tournament. They play their first opponent, Stony Brook, on Friday at 1 p.m. at the Hellman Tennis Complex in Berkeley.

Cal knows little about Stony Brook (12-4), a university smaller than UC Berkeley that is located in Long Island, N.Y. Stony Brook did not play a single ranked opponent all year and only made the tournament by winning the American East Conference.

Should the Bears beat the Seawolves, they will go on to face the winner of the other first-round matchup — either St. Mary’s or Auburn — at noon on Saturday. No. 21 Auburn just missed the cutoff for hosting the first two rounds of the NCAAs, as only the top-16 squads gain home court advantage. Meanwhile the Bears crushed Saint Mary’s in January in a 7-0 route.

As the only Goliath in a first round full of Davids, the biggest challenge for the Bears will be adjusting to the slightly different rules between the tournament and the regular season. Though matches are the same format, they end as soon as a team clinches the match with four points, so some players will not go on to finish their individual match.

“We just play to four, so when we clinch the match, it just stops,” said Cal coach Amanda Augustus. “It’s a little bit of an adjustment mentally to not lose concentration if someone is up and about to win. (They have to be) keeping attention on their own court.”

While the Bears have made it to at least the sweet 16 in the last six years, they are not getting ahead of themselves.

“You have to take it match by match,” Augustus said. “You can’t assume anything at this time of year, because all these teams have played a lot of tennis, and they wouldn’t be in the tournament if they didn’t have a good season.”

For Cal, the real advantage to hosting the beginning of the tournament is not having home court advantage or being the highest seed — it’s being home for finals week. While schools like Stony Brook and Auburn have to make the long trek to Berkeley this week, the Bears will be able to sleep in their own beds at night.

“It’s huge,” Augustus said. “Especially with finals on the horizon and all their office hours, review sessions, tutoring, papers and all this stuff they got. So they don’t have to deal with that too much — until hopefully next week.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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Junior Jaci Powell, the only Cal athlete at the meet, was able to set three personal records on route to a fourth-place finish in the competition.

Powell competes in the heptathlon, a contest that consists of seven events — the 100-meter hurdles, 200-meter sprint, high jump, shot put, long jump, javelin throw and the 800-meter race. The athlete with the most combined points wins the competition.

Though Powell was there without her team, she found that she was still able to focus and compete at a high level.

“It’s always nice to have your team there, but then again, it’s an individual sport,” Powell said. “So I was focusing on just me.”

The first day of the competition featured four of the seven events — including two that Powell set personal records in. Powell set her first of three PRs in the 100-meter hurdles, which she ran in 14.07 seconds to earn a third-place finish.

However, Powell struggled in the high jump, finishing in last place among 10 competitors. In shot put, she could only muster a seventh-place finish.

Powell bounced back when she put together her second personal record of the day, posting a time of 24.86 seconds in the 200-meter sprint. Powell came in second to only the blazingly fast Keia Pinnick of Arizona State, who was 0.35 seconds faster.

With the first day already in the books, Powell only had three events left to improve her seventh-place standing.

“I’m competitive,” Powell said. “I don’t want to see seventh place. And I didn’t see myself staying in seventh place, because long jump and javelin are two of my better events.”

On Sunday, Powell immediately rebounded. She placed third in the long jump, and in the javelin throw, she dominated with a 145-foot toss that was enough to earn Powell her third PR and her only first place finish of the weekend.

“It’s just been going well,” Powell said of the her performance in the javelin toss. “It’s just really exciting when you’re working on these things in practice, and they come together in an event.”

In the last event of the competition, Powell placed sixth in the 800-meter race with a time of 2:23.19.

When the dust finally settled, Powell managed to jump up the ranks to a final position of fourth place in the overall point standings — just six points outside of the top three. Arizona State’s Pinnick took home the heptathlon’s top spot with a score that was a full 450 points more than Powell’s score.

Despite not being atop the leaderboard, Powell posted the best finish by a Cal athlete in the last eight years. Her total of 5351 points, which topped her previous record by more than 150 points, is the highest score a Bear has achieved since 2004.

“Some pieces didn’t go as planned, but that’s just the way this event works,” Powell said. “The score overall is a PR, and I’m happy with it.”

Contact Riley McAtee at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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On Tuesday, the selection show for the NCAAs revealed No. 8 Cal would be hosting Stony Brook, Auburn, and Saint Mary’s. The Bears will take on Stony Brook on May 10 at 10 a.m. at Hellman Tennis Complex. The winners of the Cal/Stony Brook and Auburn/St. Mary’s matches will battle each other in the second round the next day.

The team, however, is more concerned with the later stages of the tournament.

Due to the way the seeding worked out, Cal will not face another Pac-12 school until at least the semifinals — should it make it that far. The Bears could face either USC, Stanford, or Arizona State in those semifinals or could see UCLA in the championship.

Only those four Pac-12 teams made the tournament.

“I was a little disappointed to not see more of our conference teams selected,” said Cal coach Amanda Augustus. “Normally we have 7 or so. I think we play good tennis out here.”

Augustus attributes the lack of west coast teams to rules by the NCAA that reward teams for playing easy schedules and therefore amassing impressive records.

“Hopefully they’ll revisit some of these new rules like the .500 rule that I think rewarded teams for going around and playing an easier schedule and scheduling a lot of matches,” Augustus said.

The Pac-12, a tough conference for tennis, doesn’t get the benefit of easy matches. This has resulted in lower seeds for the Pac-12 schools, with USC the highest at No. 5.

But the benefit is that the Pac-12 schools are better prepared for the tough competition.

“I think that’s why our schools always do well in the postseason — because we play tough matches against each other,” Augustus said. “I think it will show by the end of the tournament how strong the 5 teams are that did get selected.”

Meanwhile, the players are not thinking that deeply about the structure of the tournament. They’re just happy to be at home for two consecutive weeks to finish up school before travelling to Chicago for the later rounds of the NCAAs.

“Honestly right now, I’m just thinking about school and finishing up the finals and everything,” Anett Schutting said. “Then I can just focus on tennis.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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They leave in a much different situation.

Zsofi Susanyi, the No. 5 player in the nation, left her third singles match of the weekend with an injury. Susanyi was battling a hip flexor injury all spring that kept her bouncing in and out of the lineup from week to week.

The details and extent of her injury are unknown at this time — she may have reaggravated her hip or be suffering from something else entirely. But if she misses significant time, it will be a huge blow to a Cal squad that had just begun to find its groove with its star player back in the lineup.

Cal also had two other players in the main singles tournament — Anett Schutting and Klara Fabikova. The two met in the third round of matches, with Schutting taking down the freshman Fabikova, 6-2, 6-4.

Schutting then advanced to take on Krista Hardebeck of Stanford in the semifinals but lost, 6-4, 6-2.

Schutting also competed with her partner Lynn Chi in the doubles championships, where the story was similar. In that tournament, Schutting and Chi were also able to advance to the semifinals but lost to USC’s top duo of Kaitlyn Christian and Sabrina Santamaria, who were the top-seeded team coming into the the tournament.

The bright spot of the tournament for the Bears came in the doubles invitational tournament — essentially the tournament for the doubles teams aren’t able to make the main event.

In that tournament, the doubles duo of Annie Goransson and Cecilia Estlander were able to reach the finals. Estlander has rarely played in the spring due to injuries, and the duo had never actually played together before, but they were able to shine.

To get to the finals, Goransson and Estlander had to defeat the top-ranked duo of USC’s Gabi Desimone and Danielle Lao in a 9-7 thriller.

After that, they quickly advanced to the finals and faced the third-seeded duo of Calli Craig and Sarah Pham out of Utah. This match went to the wire. Both teams traded points back and forth until Goransson and Estlander fell 9-8(5) in a tiebreaker.

With that loss, the Bears fell short of their goal of taking home a championship in both of the tournaments.

But the real loss is losing Susanyi. Several Cal players admitted that finally having her back at full strength gave them a boost in confidence. Their confidence has to be taking a hit with Susanyi out yet again.

The good news for the Bears is that they have a week off for Susanyi to get healthy. The NCAAs are the last games that Cal will play all year, but that doesn’t start until well into May. Depending on the extent of her injury, Susanyi could make it back by then.

But tennis is a game of rhythm. Any player who comes back from time off needs matches to get into the groove again — a luxury Susanyi won’t have.

With Susanyi once again missing time, the Bears are left in the same place they were in at the beginning of the season — searching for a way to win without their top player.

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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But before the players can do that, they have one last match to play.

Due to a scheduling quirk, Cal (15-5, 9-1 in the Pac-12) will take on UCSB in Santa Barbara at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Though the Gauchos (14-7) have put together a decent record over the season, their schedule has been filled with unranked and unaccomplished teams. Without a ranked player on the roster, they will have a tough chance competing against Cal, which has four ranked players and two in the top 10.

The match is an odd hiccup for the Bears in a schedule otherwise consisting of weekend matches. But the Tuesday match gives them a chance to hone their skills for the postseason. Two days after the UCSB match, the team will be in Ojai, Calif., for the Pac-12 Championships.

After the win over Stanford, the Cal team feels like it is close to peaking, and the players plan to use this UCSB match as a springboard to bring their level of play to its full potential.

“I think we’re finally gelling the way we need to,” said Cal coach Amanda Augustus. “Our goal is to peak in the (NCAA) Tournament.”

The match gives many of the players a chance to practice more in doubles, in which Cal has lost the doubles point in both of its last two matches. Zsofi Susanyi recently returned from injury, and her getting more playing time with her doubles partner, Klara Fabikova, should help the duo gel the way Augustus wants.

“(Susanyi and Fabikova) just need matches,” Augustus said. “Hopefully next week, they get a lot of matches doubleswise to just kinda get them better in sync.”

Those two in sync will be a huge asset for the team. The Cal team has been regularly facing 1-0 deficits going into singles play as a result of losses in doubles.

But while the Bears are struggling in doubles, they are dominating in singles action. The team has won at least four of the six singles courts in its last four matches. Cal has used that dominance to bail itself out of early deficits and win matches.

Susanyi back on the court is a boost for the entire team. As the current No. 5 singles player in the country, Susanyi at full strength gives the other players a leap in confidence.

“Now that we have Zsofi back, we can definitely see what is possible for us,” said senior Tayler Davis. “Because before, without her, I think we weren’t as confident.”

A win against UCSB would build off the momentum that Cal gained from beating Stanford and would send the team into the postseason with a six-game winning streak and as much confidence as any team in the field.

“I think we’ve prepared really well and worked so hard for a long time now,” said senior Annie Goransson. “We’ll just see how far we can take it.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org

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After four years of consecutive losses, No. 9 Cal was finally able to topple its rival, No. 12 Stanford, 4-3, on Friday at the Hellman Tennis Complex in Berkeley.

After USC won its match against UCLA, the Cal-Stanford match was no longer for the conference title but instead for second place. The win secures Cal (15-5, 9-1 in the Pac-12) the runner-up finish in the conference, but more importantly, the match was the first time that any of the players on the Cal squad were able to beat the Cardinal (16-4, 8-2).

From the beginning of the match, the walls of Hellman reverberated with desire — both teams wanted it badly.

“I’m a very emotional person, and as expected, I cried a little bit in that opening (senior day) ceremony,” said senior Tayler Davis. “But I knew I was going to do everything I could to win this match because it meant that much to me.”

Stanford was the faster, stronger team in doubles and won on the top two doubles courts to take an early 1-0 lead.

But in singles, Cal began to climb back. The Bears soon found themselves in a 2-2 tie with three courts left in play after Lynn Chi and Zsofi Susanyi won their matches on courts No. 3 and No. 4, respectively. But Anett Schutting lost her match on the top court, knotting up the two Bay Area squads.

With Klara Fabikova pushed into a third set on court No. 2, seniors Davis and Annie Goransson had a chance to clinch the match for the Bears.

After winning a tiebreaker in the first set, Davis won the second set and her match when Stanford’s Ellen Tsay hit a ball into the net.

“I don’t think I could have asked for a better senior day for it to come down to me and Annie,” said Davis, who could not stop smiling after the win. “It was just a great feeling. I don’t think I can really describe it.”

Cal was up 3-2, and Goransson had the opportunity to clinch the match for the Bears against Stanford’s Natalie Dillon. A crowd congregated around the No. 6 court, and the match started to turn in Goransson’s favor.

“I love having a lot of people supporting me and screaming,” Goransson said. “I don’t know what happens, but I love that situation, and I raised my level quite a bit.”

With a crowd behind her, Goransson erased a 4-2 deficit in the second set and soon found herself up 6-5 on match point.

Dillon, off-balance, hit a ball high into the air. It hung in the sky forever before dropping just out of bounds.

The crowd erupted into a cheer as Goransson dropped her racket and her team rushed to embrace her.

Cal clinched its first win over the Cardinal since 2009.

“I just got this happy feeling throughout my entire body,” Goransson said, “and I looked at my teammates who I love so much, and I saw them coming towards me. I’m never going to get that kind of feeling again.”

Riley McAtee covers women’s tennis. Contact him at rmcatee@dailycal.org.

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