BATON ROUGE — The 24th-ranked LSU men’s tennis team will face off with the Tulsa Hurricane for the first time since the 1985 season on Saturday as the non-conference foes are scheduled to compete at 2:30 p.m. at the W.T. “Dub” Robinson Tennis Stadium.
“Our players are really looking forward to this match,” said LSU head coach Jeff Brown. “They’ve really had a good week of practice and it’s always good to return home and play in front of your home crowd. This will also be a good match for us to get into the proper mindset before heading into SEC play.”
LSU heads into Saturday’s contest with an overall record of 5-1 on the season after notching wins against Centenary, Texas-San Antonio, Southeastern Louisiana and by defeating the Southern Jaguars twice. The Tigers’ lone loss of the 2003 campaign came on Saturday against the 19th-ranked Texas A&M Aggies in College Station, Texas.
During the 5-2 loss on the road against the Aggies, LSU’s Cory Ross extended his singles winning streak to seven-consecutive matches by defeating Texas A&M’s John Nallon, 7-6(5), 6-2, on court No. 6. With the straight-set victory, Ross upped his overall record on the season to 13-5 and remained undefeated in dual-match play at 6-0.
The Golden Hurricane returns to Baton Rouge for the first time since 1985 on Saturday. Over the past 20 years, LSU and Tulsa have only squared off against each other on three occasions as the Tigers compiled a 2-1 record in the series. In the last meeting between the teams, LSU rallied past the Golden Hurricane, 8-1, in 1985 at the W.T. “Dub” Robinson Tennis Stadium.
LSU will be led by Peter Richman and a trio of nationally ranked singles players in No. 74 Sebastian Rutka, No. 101 Bryan Fisher and No. 124 Jason Hazley on Saturday.
Richman, the Tigers’ left-handed sophomore from Toronto, Canada, is currently in the midst of a five-match winning streak and leads the team with four victories against top-100 ranked opponents. He owns a 12-5 overall record on the season and possesses a perfect 5-0 mark in dual-match play.
Tulsa (4-4) will be led by 43rd-ranked Alejandro Tejerina in singles play and by the 19th-ranked doubles combination of Ryan Livesay and Dustin Taylor. Livesay, the Golden Hurricane senior from Portland, Ore., was named the Western Athletic Conference Player of the Week on Monday.
“Tulsa is a talented team,” Brown said. “They have a really talented No. 1 singles player in Alejandro Tejerina and they’ve played a lot of good teams to some close matches. We know that they are going to be ready to compete and we just have to make sure that we come out expecting a tough challenge.”
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.