PALO ALTO, Calif. The combined LSU men’s and women’s team finished third in the WingspanBank.com/World TeamTennis National Collegiate Championship hosted this weekend by Stanford.
LSU beat fellow Southeastern Conference member South Carolina on Sunday morning in the third place match.
Everybody had a great weekend, said LSU men’s tennis coach Jeff Brown. We played well as a team and were able to come away with a third-place finish in a very prestigious tournament.
LSU’s third-place finish is the highest of the five SEC-member schools that competed. South Carolina was fourth. Mississippi, Tennessee and Vanderbilt were also representing the league.
This definitely shows that LSU tennis is among the best in the nation as well as the SEC, said LSU women’s coach Tony Minnis. It gives us some confidence going into the season that will definitely be a big asset to our team.
In the third-place match, the Tigers took four of the five matches, three of which went into tiebreakers.
The 15th-ranked doubles tandem of Bruna Colosio and Ana Paul Mores gave LSU an early lead with a 6-4 victory over the No. 31 pair of Katarina Markovski and Jennifer Radman.
Michal Chmela, ranked seventh nationally, extended the Tiger lead with a 6-2 win over 24th-ranked Jerome Jourdan.
It was a big boost for us to get an early lead, said Brown. Yesterday we fell behind early and werent able to come back so winning the first two sets was big.
Leading 12-9, LSU squeaked out the next two sets, each in tiebreakers to up its lead to an insurmountable 24-16.
Chmela and teammate Daniel Kiernan, ranked No. 29, beat Jourdan and Olaf Akesson 6-5 (5-1). Jourdan and Akesson are each ranked nationally in doubles with different partners.
In the womens singles match, No. 30 Colosio recorded a mild upset in beating No. 21 Markovski 6-5 (5-3).
Bruna played great, said Minnis of his sophomore player. She did a good job of carrying on our momentum and not letting South Carolina back in the match.
South Carolina’s team of Jourdan-Radman defeated LSUs Kiernan-Mores 6-5 (5-1) in the mixed doubles match to cut the lead to 29-22 and force overtime.
In World TeamTennis rules, if the team trailing wins mixed doubles, the match continues until either there is a tie or the leading team wins a game.
In the extra games, LSU dropped the first one but won the second for a final score of 30-23.
It was a great experience for everyone here, said LSU coach Jeff Brown. The players played hard and enjoyed the different format. I thought the tournament was a tremendous success.