Five Teams Head to Postseason Action

The Boston University women’s tennis teamwon the America East championship on May 2, with a 4-3 win overBinghamton, earning an automatic bid to the to the NCAA tournament. This is the team’s 12th straight trip to the NCAA. Women’s tennis is one of five BU teams going into postseason play; the others are men’s crew, women’s rowing and lacrosse, and softball.

The Terriers willsquare off against 11th-seeded Miami in an opening-round matchup onFriday, May 14, at 1 p.m. in Coral Gables, Fla. Along with the Terriers(11-11) and Hurricanes (17-5),Texas A&M (14-9) and South Florida (11-7) are also playing. Miami, with a 10-1 record, enters the tournament with an at-large bid after finishing second in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

For the third time in the past four seasons, the Boston University women’s lacrosse team will face Penn in the NCAA tournament. This marks its sixth straight NCAA appearance. The team, which posted an 11-10 victory over UMBC in the America East title game on May 8, will travel this weekend to Immaculata University, in Malvern, Pa., to face the eighth-seeded Quakers in an NCAA first-round matchup on Saturday, May 15, at 1 p.m. The Terriers and Penn faced each other in both the 2007 and 2008 NCAA tournaments. In 2007, the Quakers came away with an 11-5 first-round victory, and in 2008 BU dropped an 8-5 quarterfinal. Penn (14-3) was an automatic qualifier for this year’s NCAA tournament after winning the inaugural Ivy League Tournament last weekend, with a 9-8 victory over Dartmouth.

BU softball steamrolled its way to its first regular season America East title since 2007. The team’s fate was clinched on May 9 when Cassidi Hardy (SED’10) pitched her first career perfect game, and the offense exploded for 26 runs in 8 combined innings at home, leading BU to a doubleheader sweep of Hartford. Defeating the Hawks 8-0 and 18-2, the Terriers (31-19, 14-3 AE) will enter the America East Championships, at the University of Maine on Thursday, May 13, as the number-one seed. The Terriers’ 18 runs in the second game are one shy of the school record, set against Penn State in 1991; their 18 RBIs break the previous mark of 15, set in 2007 against Maine.

In women’s rowing, the varsity four ‘A’ boat, coxed by Mia Serabian (CAS’13) and stroked by classmate Gabby Cutler (CGS’11), cruised to victory to lead the Terriers to a third-place finish in the Beanpot on the Charles River May 1. Finishing fourth in the varsity eight race, the Terriers lost the Council Cup to Northeastern and the Allen-DeWolfe Trophy to Radcliffe. This weekend, the Terriers head for the Eastern Sprints, the annual rowing championship for the Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC), which will be held on Sunday, May 16, on the Cooper River in New Jersey.

Competing in its final home race of the season, the 12th-ranked BU men’s crew team fell to number-eight Wisconsin’s varsity eight in the Jablonic Cup race on the Charles River on May 2. Coxed by Sarah Tadiri (CAS’13) and stroked by Todd Sukolsky (ENG’13), the Terrier freshman eight continued its impressive streak, defeating the Badgers to finish the dual season undefeated.

The BU men head to the EARC Eastern Sprints on Sunday, May 16, being held in Worcester, Mass., on Lake Quinsigamond.