LA MIRADA, Calif. --- Wow did Biola Women's Tennis play some great singles tennis at the Biola Tennis Center on Tuesday.

After the visiting Cal State LA Golden Eagles took all three doubles decisions, Head Coach David Goodman's group pushed five of the six singles matches to a third set and basically made the match a tossup with the last two active courts. 

The sheer rush to the finish alone would make this a very exciting rematch if one were to happen at the PacWest tournament. But Cal State LA came away with the 4-3 win in this meeting after picking up two of the three-set matches. 

The Golden Eagles got off to a strong start with doubles play. Allison Torres and Ines Diaz played some long rallies and consequently won some big points. But all three Golden Eagles pairs held onto every break they earned to take the initial 1-0 lead. 

Biola responded by going up a game or two on the top four singles courts. The visiting team pushed the first set on courts one, two and three to a tiebreaker and won the set on court four. But Madison Swaney won three-straight games in her first set to win 7-5 and Brooke Fager added to the Eagles momentum with a resolute effort of her own in the tiebreaker.

Noa Davico took the open 3-1 lead over in the breaker. But Fager buckled down in a big way to take the first set without needing any extra points. The freshman played stretches of inspired tennis on Tuesday and made key adjustments in her return game to account for a big kick serve from Davico. She almost pushed the second set to another tiebreaker against CSULA's No. 2 and used a few powerful winners to take the opening game of the third set.

Davico was the winner at the end. But there was no question Fager displayed a game that was worthy of a top-two singles player, and that she would have a good chance of winning a second meeting if given the opportunity. 

Speaking of adjustments, the women who provided Biola's singles wins all made quality mid-match tweaks and showed excellent mental strength to prevail in three sets.

The aforementioned Swaney immediately went back to work after dropping her second set and won the final four games of her match to reverse the 6-1 score on her opponent. Swaney played the brand of tennis that Ines Diaz had to overcome on court three: a fundamental, defense-first mentality that made for long rallies and that set the table for the woman on the other side of the net to make mistakes first.

But Diaz got into a nice rhythm against Chelsey Ruiz after losing her first-set tiebreaker. The Spaniard used a nice mix of aggressive attempts at winners and safe groundstrokes that countered Ruiz when she successfully scrambled to keep points alive. Consequently, the scores of the final two sets are better indicators of how Diaz dictated almost every point in the match: she won with scores of 6-2, 6-3. 

If there was a theme in Colbeyshae Emery's match at No. 1 it would definitely be "hanging in there." Coming off a big win in the No. 1 flight this past Saturday, Emery had to play tiebreakers during both of her opening sets in a back-and-forth battle with Amanda Schneider and lost the opening round to go down a set. 

But once Emery broke through with a tiebreak win in the second set, the Torrance, California-native took the mental edge in the final match of the night and rolled in the final set, 6-2, to win her third singles match in a row. 

Lastly, Lily Waterhouse also won a singles match on Tuesday, though it wouldn't count toward the dual match's overall statistics since it was played on line No. 7. Waterhouse established control of her match early on and won 6-4, 6-1.

The Eagles will play the second part of their three-match week this Friday when they travel to University of Redlands for a 1 p.m. start.