OU tennis: Sooners have a chance to cap off historic season

May 19—Oklahoma was playing with house money, but it was looking for more.

The second-ranked Sooners led No. 15-ranked Stanford 3-1 at home during their first ever appearance in the Round of 16 last Friday. But to advance to the Elite Eight, and make more program history in the process, the Sooners needed one more team point.

They got it.

After winning the first set in her singles match, Dana Guzman trailed 3-1 in the second set. But she rallied to win the set 6-4, giving the Sooners a 4-1 win, their 30th victory of the season and a spot in the national quarterfinals.

Moments like that have defined the Sooners' most successful season in program history, and for OU coach Audra Cohen, there's been many pieces that have made up the puzzle.

----The program had been growing under Cohen.

In the 2019 spring season, the Sooners went 17-9 and won their first-round playoff match in the NCAA Championships. After the 2020 season was canceled due to the COVID-19 season, the Sooners returned in 2021 by winning 15 games and making another playoff appearance.

Though the Sooners narrowly lost 4-3 in the first round to USC, they finished the season ranked inside the top-25 for the first time. Cohen believed the season could be a stepping stone.

"We built a lot of momentum last year," Cohen said. "We had the foundation to be a very, very good program. And then with recruiting, we were able to bring in more talent this year. So when the talent combined with that strong foundation that we had, that's really what led to this happening. So it wasn't really a surprise, but more so a combination of those two things coming together."

Coming into this year, the expectations were high. The Sooners came into the season ranked at No. 19 in the preseason, and Cohen was confident her team could do even better.

"I think our goal from the beginning of the year was to win a national championship," Cohen said. "I think this team knew the ability that they had, the level that they had around them and they've been bought into being really good from the beginning. And I think that's an important part of why we've been so successful this year."

It didn't take long for the Sooners to find success.

They opened the season with 11 straight wins, including victories over No. 23-ranked Princeton, No. 6 Duke, No. 1 Texas and No. 5 Pepperdine.

While the Sooners had confidence going into the year, it was the wins over ranked opponents that gave them momentum.

"I would say it even started out with our first match against Princeton," OU junior Carmen Corley said. "Because like last year, we got into a lot of 4-3 (game scores) and lost, and just to even win that first 4-3 with a pretty young team... it was a boost right from the start. Each win has been really special because they've been all really good."

----Carmen, and her sister Ivana Corley, quickly became cornerstones for the program. Ivana arrived at OU as a freshman in 2018, with Carmen joining her in 2020. The sisters quickly became a dominant duo in doubles matches.

They won all 10 of their doubles matches in 2020 and followed that up with a 27-3 record last season. That season, they rose to the 11th-ranked doubles team in the country, the Sooners' highest-ranked doubles team in program history.

They've continued that this season. Currently, the duo is ranked 10th nationally with a 25-7 record. No other Sooners' doubles team is ranked.

"I think Carmen and I have done a lot of reflection and even improvement with each other since Carmen first came in 2020," Ivana said.

As successful as the sisters are on the court, they're even closer off the court. But in rare moments of frustration, the two have worked to keep their relationship in perspective.

One thing that's helped, Ivana said, is a story Cohen told the sisters before the playoffs began last season about the brother duo of Bob and Mike Bryan, one of the most successful doubles teams in professional tennis history.

"At Wimbledon, after their first-round match they were fighting during the match and they barely squeaked through and won the match," Ivana recalled Cohen saying. "And on the train ride back to the hotel, they were getting into a fistfight. One of them was like chasing the other up the stairs. I remember her telling us the story and saying that after they had this fight, they went and they won Wimbledon that year.

"And I think [what she] was telling us is that if we have our sibling moments, that's normal and that we can't sit there and think that's not normal, because we just have to know that that's something we're always gonna have to work through. And it's always going to be there. But if we can learn how to do it just like them... I mean, the Brian brothers are the some of the best to ever play..."

For Cohen, the Corley sisters have done more than just win doubles matches.

"I think Carmen and Ivana have been kind of our energy leaders and so for them to lead through their doubles and through their sisterhood has been pretty special for this program," Cohen said. "But Carmen and Ivana are really our only older players when you really look at our roster, so that's been really helpful is that they're part of that foundation of the program and then when we brought in a higher level of talent, they were able to follow suit. So they've been pivotal for the program's development over the long run."

----The team's first loss didn't come until the ITA National Indoors tournament, falling 4-2 to second-ranked North Carolina in the championship game.

They followed that loss up with 16 straight wins, their only loss coming in the Big 12 Tennis Championships against Texas.

Those two losses, the Sooners' only blemishes of the year, have been valuable lessons for the team.

"Losing in the Big 12 conference tournament to Texas was a really good moment for everybody to reflect on and then get even more hungry for the future," Cohen said. "We bring our second-place trophy from national indoors out to every practice with us. The trophy literally sits on the umpire's chair at every practice. So it's really about that hunger, like, 'Hey, This team does not like losing.'

"The way that they handled that was they turned around and worked harder and got hungrier and they let that loss fuel them and I think we almost needed that heading into this NCAA Tournament."

Despite the two losses, the Sooners were selected to host the regional tournament and the super regional. They took care of Bryant 4-0 before narrowly escaping No. 17-ranked Arizona State to advance to the super regional.

That's when they defeated Stanford to advance to Friday's Elite Eight in Champaign, Illinois.

"It was just something so incredibly special," Cohen said. "And to be able to share it at our home with our fans and our people that have been a part of this journey from the beginning and just how much our team stepped up and just went after it [was incredible]. They believed in it from start to finish."

----The Sooners have already clinched their most successful season in program history.

They could add to it this weekend.

The Sooners (30-2, 9-0) get Texas A&M at 7 p.m. Friday night. If they win, they'll move on to Saturday's Final Four. Win that, and they'll be in Sunday's national title game.

It's going to take a team effort, Cohen said.

"The goal is that everybody's able to execute their game at the highest level that they have and on the same day and that's what it takes to win a championship," Cohen said.

Regardless of what happens this weekend, this season will always stand out for Carmen.

"What I think stands out as far as [looking] at our team, we're not all the same individual," Carmen said. "... I just think that you pick up all these random pieces [that don't] seem like they're gonna fit together. And then they make it work and it's really something special and that's how I feel like our season has been like.

"It's just fit together so perfectly. And I think it's just really special how we can make something like that work."

Jesse Crittenden is the sports editor of The Transcript and covers OU athletics. Reach him at jesse@normantranscript.com or at 405-366-3580