The run had to end at some point for the Penn women's tennis team.
The Quakers, who earned an at-large berth into the NCAA Tournament after finishing second in the Ivy League, shocked Tennessee in the first round, 4-2.
But they could not pull off the bigger upset and lost to sixth-seeded Georgia Tech, the regional bracket's host school, by a score of 4-0 on Saturday.
The No. 30 Lady Volunteers -- who, like the No. 45 Quakers, were unseeded in the field -- were competing in the Tournament for the 12th consecutive year.
But it didn't take long for the Quakers to prove that they deserved their at-large selection, the program's fourth trip to the postseason in five years.
Penn came out of the gate firing and took a 1-0 lead in the doubles point as sophomore Michelle Mitchell and senior Caroline Stanislawski shut out Tennessee's Samantha Orlin and Hayley Prendergast 8-0 in the No. 3 slot. Then, sophomores Julia Koulbitskaya and Yulia Rivelis won their match in the top position by a score of 8-4 to clinch the doubles point.
After winning one singles match by default, making the score 2-0, Koulbitskaya gave Penn a commanding 3-0 lead with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over the Lady Vols' Victoria Jones.
Tennessee soon mounted a charge of their own, as Blakeley Griffith won the first five games of the first set and the last five of the third set, beating Mitchell 6-2, 2-6, 6-1 and giving the Lady Vols their first point.
Rivelis had a chance to put the match away in the No. 1 singles slot. She dropped the first set to her opponent, but then won the second and was up 5-4 in the third with two match points.
But Tennessee's Melissa Schaub rallied to take that game and the match in a dramatic tiebreaker.
With the score at 3-2, Stanislawski was finally able to seal the deal for Penn, winning a three-set thriller, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4.
"We didn't play well in doubles," Tennessee co-head coach Mike Patrick said after the match. "We competed much better most places in singles, but came up a little short in the end."
"That's the thing that is frustrating. Give Penn a lot of credit; we tried all over the place, but just didn't have enough."
The victory was Penn's first in postseason play since 2002, when the Quakers swept Richmond in the first round, 4-0.
But the Quakers' bid for a trip to their first Sweet 16 ran into a wall in the form of sixth-seeded Georgia Tech.
The Yellow Jackets, who trounced Southland Conference champion Southeast Louisiana in the first round, took control early on in the doubles point, winning the No. 1 and No. 3 spots each by the score of 8-1.
Georgia Tech then picked up its second point when Mitchell lost in the No. 3 singles spot to Alison Silverio 6-0, 6-0, and the score was pushed to 3-0 when Kristi Miller, the top-ranked singles player in the nation, beat Rivelis in straight sets.
All eyes went to the No. 2 singles match, but the Yellow Jackets just seemed to have too much going for them and Koulbitskaya lost her match in straight sets to wrap things up.
"They're a little faster, a little stronger, a little better right down the line," Penn coach Michael Dowd said. "They're one of the best teams I've ever faced."
This postseason moved the Quakers' record to 13-6, and their victory over Tennessee was the third Tournament win in program history. Two out of the three have come under Dowd.
"I think we proved that we're every bit as good as some of the top-ranked teams," he said.
Harvard, who won the Ivy League's automatic berth into the Tournament, lost to Purdue in the first round by a score of 4-2.
