BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s tennis team qualified for the NCAA Women’s Tennis Tournament for an eighth-straight season on Thursday, as the Lady Tigers will take on the Furman Lady Paladins in the first round on Saturday, May 11, at 9 a.m. in Chapel Hill, N.C., the NCAA announced via webcast.
“I feel very fortunate that we started playing a lot better as the year went on,” said LSU head coach Tony Minnis. “We overcame a lot of adversity and now it’s tournament time. There’s a clean slate and we just have to make sure that we’re focused and ready to do the things that we are capable of doing.”
LSU heads into the NCAA Tournament with an overall record of 12-12 on the season after facing one of the nation’s toughest schedules. The Lady Tigers played eight opponents ranked in the top 25 this season and earned crucial wins over two NCAA Tournament teams. LSU knocked off 17th-ranked Kentucky and Southern in dual-match play.
The Lady Paladins of Furman enter next weekend’s first-round contest with a 22-3 overall record and as the 2002 Southern Conference Champions. Furman ended the regular season with a perfect 9-0 conference mark and has notched key wins against Clemson, North Carolina State, New Mexico and South Florida. The Lady Paladins have never won an NCAA Tournament match.
“I think that we have a very good draw from a standpoint that I think that we have shots to do something special,” Minnis said. “But every team in the NCAA Tournament is very tough and both Furman and North Carolina have had great seasons. It’s going to be a war and we have to be ready to play some good tennis.”
The seventh-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels will host the four-team regional and will play Loyola (Md.) in first-round action at the Cone-Kenfield Tennis Center in Chapel Hill, N.C.
The Tar Heels come into the tournament as the sixth-seeded team and with an impressive 22-4 overall record, while Loyola boasts a top-notch 23-3 dual-match record and earned an automatic bid by winning the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference title for the fourth-straight season. This is also North Carolina’s fourth-consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance, but its first time serving as a host site.
The NCAA Singles Championship selections were also announced on Thursday by the NCAA committee and LSU senior Bruna Colosio was invited to her third-consecutive NCAA Singles Tournament. Colosio advanced to the quarterfinal round of the prestigious 64-person field in each of the previous two seasons and is only the second Lady Tiger to qualify for three NCAA Singles Championships.
Colosio, the nation’s 40th-ranked singles player in the nation, owns a 16-8 overall record on the season and will join teammate Rocio Fantilli in the 2002 NCAA Doubles Championship Tournament. The dominant pair of native South Americans will compete in the exclusive field of 32 teams in Palo Alto, Calif., during the week of May 16-24. The combination of Fantilli and Colosio finished the regular season as the 19th-ranked doubles pair and with a 13-8 dual-match record.
The LSU women’s tennis team will begin its quest for a second trip to the Sweet 16 in three seasons on Saturday, May 11, as the Lady Tigers challenge the Furman Lady Paladins in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Chapel Hill, N.C. at 9 a.m. (Central time).