WILLIAMSBURG, Va. – The William & Mary women's tennis team returns to the friendly confines of the McCormack-Nagelsen Tennis Center to host Ivy League foe Dartmouth on Saturday afternoon. The rematch of the 2015 NCAA Opening Round tilt is slated for a noon start. Following doubles against the Big Green, Tribe tennis will offer FREE pizza to fans in attendance, while supplies last.
 
Scouting the Tribe
The Tribe enters the weekend at 3-5 on the year following a pair of losses at ACC foes Wake Forest and N.C. State. All five W&M setbacks in 2017 have come to teams that ended last season in the top 40 nationally. The five programs are a combined 32-11 this season. Against N.C. State, junior Maria Groener tallied a nationally-ranked win, upsetting No. 106-ranked Amanda Rebol at the No. 6 singles position. The players split 6-4 sets, before Groener outlasted Rebol, 10-7, in the third-set super tiebreaker for her sixth win of the year. After the Wolfpack claimed the doubles points, the Tribe took three singles matches to three sets, before falling to N.C. State. Sophomore Lauren Goodman, who was named CAA Player of the Week on Feb. 1, and freshman Natalia Perry both won sets at No. 2 and No. 5, respectively, before eventually falling in three. Goodman and junior Olivia Thaler won at the No. 2 doubles spot in the match with Wake Forest. The duo won CAA Doubles Team of the Week honors on Feb. 8 and sits at 3-1 in dual-match competition. Goodman, Thaler and junior Ekaterina Stepanova, who was the CAA Player of the Week on Feb. 8, lead W&M with 4-3 dual-match singles records. Overall, Faure tops W&M in singles wins with 13, while Goodman owns the most doubles victories with 10.
 
Scouting Dartmouth
Dartmouth enters the match-up with the Tribe on a roll, sitting at 7-0 after two-straight event titles. The Big Green is coming off wins over Brown, 4-1, and Columbia, 4-0, to win the ECAC Indoor Championship in Cambridge, Mass., last weekend. In the title match against Columbia, Dartmouth won the doubles point and then received straight-set singles wins from Taylor Ng (No. 1), Rachel Lyn (No. 5) and Chuyang Guan (No. 6) to clinch the title. A week earlier, the Big Green traveled to Minneapolis, Minn., and picked up a pair of impressive wins over Minnesota, 4-3, and Washington State, 5-2, to win the Courtside Classic. Dartmouth opened the season with home victories over Boston University, 7-0, Boston College, 5-2, and Purdue, 4-3. Ng, who has spent time in the national singles rankings, is Dartmouth's top player and sports a 13-5 overall mark this season to go along with a 5-2 ledger at No. 1. Jacqueline Crawford is 5-0 during the spring at No. 2 and 11-1 overall, while Lyn is a team-best 13-1 in singles and 7-0 at the No. 5 post. Kristina Mathis is an impressive 4-1 in dual-match play at No. 3 for the Big Green. In doubles, Mathis and Ng are 4-2 at the No. 1 spot, while Lyn and Julia Schroeder at 4-2 at No. 2.
 
Series History: W&M vs. Dartmouth
The W&M-Dartmouth match-up will be just the third between the schools. The teams met in the 2015 NCAA Tournament with the then-No. 31-ranked Big Green tallying a 4-1 win. W&M won the first meeting between the teams, 5-3, at the ITA Team Finals Four in October of 1992 in Philadelphia, Pa. The teams are familiar with one another having both competed at the Tribe Invitational in September.