The UW women's tennis team closed out their long, difficult regular season with a 4-3 loss to Michigan State in East Lansing, Mich. Saturday.
Senior Caitlin Burke led the Badgers by crushing MSU's No. 1 Christine Bader 6-0, 6-0 and is now ranked No. 30 nationally in singles. Burke also paired with sophomore Elizabeth Carpenter to beat Sarah Andrews and Stephanie Kebler at the top doubles spot. Burke finished the season with a 10-2 record at the one spot.
Junior Nicole Beck and senior Kaylan Caiati clinched the doubles point by beating Ana Milosavljevic and Pascale Schnitzer 8-6.
Carpenter also came back to take the No. 3 singles spot from Kebler. After losing the first set 6-0, Carpenter closed out the match with 6-4, 6-2 set wins.
That, however, was where the success ended for the Badgers. At the two spot, Caiati won her first set 7-5 but could not hold on as her opponent Schnitzer won the last two sets 6-4, 6-2.
Michigan State earned the bulk of their points by dominating the 4 through 6 spots. None of the Badgers at those spots could take the match to three sets and only one won more than three games in any of her sets. Switching the lineup did not work, as junior Morgan Tuttle moved up to No. 4 and entered the contest on a four-match winning streak but fell to Sarah Andrews 7-5, 6-4.
This season has not treated Wisconsin well despite the success of Burke. The Badgers finish with a regular season record of 4-16 and did not win any of their 10 conference matches.
At the end of the season, UW will bid farewell to Caiati and Burke, who both leave school with excellent career records. Burke will be looking to win her third team MVP.
Wisconsin will play their next match Thursday in the Big Ten championships at the Baseline Tennis Center in Minneapolis.
—uwbadgers.com
contributed to this report.
