KNOXVILLE ? The 23rd-ranked Kentucky women?s tennis team suffered its second consecutive hard-luck loss on Sunday as it dropped a 6-1 decision to No. 26 Tennessee at the UT Varsity Courts.

The Lady Vols opened the match by taking a hotly-contested doubles point before eeking out victories on singles courts one through four. The Wildcats got their lone point from Whitney Spencer on No. 6 as she drilled Zsofia Zubor, 6-1, 6-0.

Trailing 1-0 entering singles, UK appeared to be in good shape early on, however, the big games went the way of Tennessee, beginning on court four. There, Carolina Escamilla dropped a tiebreaker to decide the first set and eventually fell to Samantha Orlin, 7-6, 6-1, as the Vols went up 2-0.

At No. 2, senior Kim Coventry battled valiantly only suffer a similar fate. Down a set and trailing 5-2 in the second, she rallied to take a 6-5 lead only to have Connor Vogel come right back to force another tiebreaker. Vogel would go on to win the breaker and sneak out with a 7-5, 7-6 win make it 3-0 in favor of Tennessee.

At the time, Joelle Schwenk and Sarah Woestmann were in tight matches at Nos. 1 and 3, respectively. Woestmann had won the first set only to have Caitlin Whoriskey force a third by winning the second. As their match neared completion, the 122nd-ranked Schwenk watched her upset bid of No. 31 Blakely Griffith go by the wayside, 6-4, 7-5, as UT clinched the match. Schwenk had three set points in the second stanza, but was unable to extend the match.

Moments later, Woestmann went down, 4-6, 6-2, 7-6 after holding four match points. It was just the second loss of her career as she fell to 16-2.

Spencer would go on to wrap up an easy victory while Jessica Giuggioli split two sets before dropping a super-tiebreaker on court five.

In doubles, Escamilla and Woestmann lost for just the third time this season on court two, dropping an 8-4 decision to Griffith and Orlin. The Lady Vols clinched the point when the nation?s fifth-ranked duo of Coventry and Schwenk were knocked off by Whoriskey and Zubor, 9-7.

Kentucky, which fell to 15-3 overall and 6-2 in the Southeastern Conference returns to action on Friday when it travels to South Carolina for another crucial SEC battle.