Bergman was referring to both Lingman’s first-seed match, 6-3, 6-7 (6), 4-6, and Mukundan’s at No. 5, 6-3, 2-6, 3-6. Lingman held three match points in her second-set tiebreak but promptly dropped five straight points to lose the second set. She was then dispatched with a tight 6-4 third set.

With the overall score knotted 3-3, all the pressure lay on Chu’s shoulders, and as the freshman played the day’s last match against veteran Tar Heel senior Kendrick Bunn, it seemed that the feisty upstart might actually prevail twice.

Chu served for the first set at 5-4, but her opponent’s experience proved too much, and Chu ultimately lost the deciding match 7-5, 6-4.

Bergman was quick not to place any blame.

“Regardless of who it is, anyone in the top six of the [singles] lineup is pretty hard when you’re playing a top-10 team,” she said. “It was a little disappointing, but we definitely should have won, so that…builds our confidence.”

Mukundan agreed.

“We had a really strong showing against three of the top teams in the country,” she said. “We beat one, and we came close to the others, and it was just a matter of a few points that we lost [to UNC].”

Next up for the Crimson will be a Valentine’s Day weekend tour of Illinois, during which the squad will challenge both the University of Illinois and Northwestern.