Without a doubt, Saturday’s NCAA Doubles Final was a Stanford affair.

The No. 1 Cardinal finished out a perfect 27-0 season and went on to send all seven of its starting players, including two tough doubles teams, to the NCAA Individual Tournament.

In the final match the season, junior Alice Barnes and senior Erin Burdette closed out a 6-3, 6-4 victory over No. 36 junior Amber Liu and sophomore Anne Yelsey at Dan Magill Tennis Complex in Athens, Ga. It marked only the third time in NCAA Championship history that all four doubles finalists hailed from the same school.

Stanford is no stranger to making headlines in the recent history of women’s tennis. Proud owners of 14 NCAA titles and an 18-year dynasty of Pacific-10 Conference honors, the otherwise rare national showdown of Stanford’s top two doubles duos seemed only to continue a long-standing Cardinal trend.

But for Burdette, a senior who endured a rollercoaster year of injuries, her final collegiate triumph rang truer to her than any praises past records could ever sing.

Recouping a 30-love deficit, the Atlanta, Ga., native served out a perfect four points at 5-4 to clinch the match in straight sets.

Having already served out three-set decisions against the tournament’s top seed in the second round, and against a persistent Texas Christian duo in the semifinal, Burdette played through a nerve-wracking scenario with unprecedented confidence.

“Alice and I were both a little nervous for a second, but we managed to come back and win,” Burdette said. “Alice was finishing off the points really well at the net, and I was used to the position [of serving for the match] from earlier in the week.”

Ever the modest teammate, Barnes, a junior, maintains that her valiant partner did most of the work in attaining the win.

“I didn’t hit anything at love-30, and to me, Erin just played perfect after that,” Barnes said. “The prospect of going to 5-all in that set me had me very nervous. It’s that point when you have the match within you grasp that you start to get nervous. But Erin, she just won the whole thing.”

In addition to the playful debate over how exactly the Stanford duo rose to victory, Barnes’ self-effacing testimonies give way to the emotional tensions stemming from playing two very close teammates.

“In terms of score, it wasn’t the closest match, but it was very emotionally and mentally draining,” Barnes said. “It was Erin’s last collegiate match, and we tried to forget that it was our teammates on the other side of the net. Honestly, it was difficult after spending so much time with them all week.”

After two action-packed weeks of hard-fought wins, two weeks of playing to crowd loyalties and deep-seated rivalries, the all-Stanford doubles final brought a lull to some of the tournament’s energy.

“You don’t want to rub the win in,” Barnes said. “We perhaps weren’t as loud as we would have been playing another school.”

Liu and Yelsey cruised to the final with four straight-set sweeps. The pairing took care of Northwestern’s Audra Cohen and Cristelle Grier in a neat, no-frills manner, tallying a 6-2, 6-2 win.

The Wildcats’ duo was seeded second in at NCAAs, and finished the season at a solid 38-9.

In the quarterfinals, Liu and Yelsey rolled over UCLA’s fourth-seeded tandem of Daniela Bercek and Riza Zalameda (34-8), 6-3, 6-0. The Bruins’ defeat marked their second trouncing of the year by the Stanford pair, the first of which came in April.

Liu and Yelsey finish the year with a 22-5 record.

While Liu and Yelsey’s solid results made their doubles run appear effortless, Barnes and Burdette slogged through a competition with the odds stacked squarely against them.

After a month of not playing together in April, only the sheer pluck of the unseeded duo could propel them through a Round of 16 battle against the top-ranked doubles team, Georgia’s Shadisha Robinson and Caroline Basu (32-5). Stanford crept by, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4.

Two days later, it would take a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 decision to send the Horned Frogs’ No. 29 Ana Cetnik and Story Tweedie-Yates (26-6) packing.

After a nail-biting regular season, one more week of demands wasn’t about to stop Barnes and Burdette from finishing strong.

“We’d been getting better and better each day,” Barnes said. “For me, it was the thing I’ll remember the most out of the two weeks at NCAAs. A month or two ago, Erin couldn’t lift her arm past her shoulder. And now [she got] such a wonderful ending to her collegiate career.”

For Burdette, collegiate endings give way to professional beginnings, and claiming the doubles title was a step in the right direction.

“My plan is to move to south Florida and start training,” Burdette said. “I’m meeting with a team of doctors next week to figure out the best step for my shoulder and rehab.”