BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s tennis team is set to face off with the Tulsa Golden Hurricane on Saturday in a non-conference matchup beginning at 11 a.m. at the W.T. “Dub” Robinson Tennis Stadium.
“This is a big weekend for us,” said LSU head coach Tony Minnis. “Tulsa is a very good team and they’ve played against some top-notch opponents this season. Every match that we play from here on out is going to be tough and we just need to play with a lot more consistency.”
LSU heads into Saturday’s competition with a 5-2 overall record after earning wins versus Louisiana Tech, Centenary, Southern, Louisiana-Monroe and Houston. The Lady Tigers’ two losses of the 2003 campaign came against Florida State, 4-3, at home and versus the Texas A&M Aggies in College Station, Texas.
During the 5-2 defeat against the Aggies, LSU’s Camila Caliari remained undefeated in dual-match play and knocked off Texas A&M’s Seva Iwinski, 6-4, 7-6(6), on court No. 6. The victory proved to be the Lady Tigers’ lone singles win of the contest as Caliari improved to an overall record of 7-2 and a perfect 6-0 mark in dual play.
Tulsa comes to Baton Rouge for the first time in school history and enters the matchup with an overall record of 4-4 in 2003. The Golden Hurricane have struggled outside of Tulsa, Okla., this season and possess a lackluster 2-3 mark in contests away from the Michael D. Case Tennis Center.
The Golden Hurricanes will attempt to knock off their second straight Southeastern Conference opponent this week after the Tulsa women’s team dropped Arkansas, 5-2, at home on Wednesday.
The contest marked Tulsa’s fourth match versus an SEC opponent after the Golden Hurricane fell to eighth-ranked Vanderbilt, 7-0, on Feb. 2, and were defeated by both No. 2 Florida, 6-1, and 11th-ranked Tennessee, 7-0, at the ITA National Team Indoor Championships held in Madison, Wis.
LSU’s Rocio Fantilli, the 116th-ranked singles player in the nation, will lead the charge for the Lady Tigers on Saturday, while Tulsa will be paced by 20th-ranked Alicia Pillay and No. 102 Aleksandra Durska.
Fantilli, LSU’s powerful junior No. 1 player from Puerto Madryn, Argentina, owns a 12-6 overall record on the season and is also a member of the nation’s 60th-ranked doubles team along with freshman Lauren Seaman. The tandem of Fantilli and Seaman enters the non-conference matchup versus Tulsa with a 9-4 overall record on the season.
“We have tons of talent on this team,” Minnis said. “I’m still very pleased with how everyone is playing right now, but we’ve seen some of the youthfulness shine through in some of our last matches.”
The LSU tennis teams will each host the Tulsa Hurricanes in a doubleheader on Saturday as the Lady Tigers kick off the day’s events at 11 a.m. at the W.T. “Dub” Robinson Tennis Center. The Tigers’ non-conference contest is scheduled to begin on the main courts at the conclusion of the women’s match.
Admission is free to all LSU home tennis matches and refreshments will be made available by the tennis Tiger Athletic Foundation.