PROVO -- Lauren Jones, the sophomore from Mission Viejo, California, has been named the Mountain West Conference Player of the Week for her performance last weekend against San Diego State and UNLV.
This weekend against No. 45 San Diego State Jones simply shined. In singles play she blew by Vidov of SDSU for a 6-4,6-4 win. The next day against No. 40 UNLV, she and freshman teammate Dolly Chang beat the experienced duo of Luis/Tempelfelde 8-2.
But her finest moment of the weekend was against the country's No. 28 ranked singles player in UNLV's Elena Gantcheva. After falling in the first set 7-5, Jones found herself in a 0-3, 40-15 hole in the second set. With the overall score 5-1 and the Cougar victory secured it would have been easy for her to simply give up and take the loss.
But this girl's a fighter. The south paw battled back to win the game, and then ripped off 2 more games to tie it up at 3-3. She lost the next game getting down 4-3. But Jones then ripped of three straight games to win the second set 6-4. In the third set tiebreaker, Jones again found herself down 8-9 and match point. But again she rallied and won the point. This seemed to be the back breaker for her opponent. Jones got up 11-10 and on that game point they volleyed back and forth for several minutes before Jones put a forehand shot into the left corner where Gantcheva could not cleanly return it. Jones won the tiebreaker 12-10 and handed Gantcheva only her second MWC loss.
The win catapulted Jones to a 103 individual national ranking and helped the Cougars secure the Mountain West Conference's regular season trophy and more importantly a number 1 seed heading into the MWC Tournament. All in all, Jones went 3-1, 2-0 in singles and 1-1 in doubles this weekend.