BATON ROUGE — The 18th-ranked LSU men’s tennis team closed out its regular-season Southeastern Conference schedule with a bang on Saturday as the Tigers posted a 7-0 sweep of the Arkansas Razorbacks at the W.T. “Dub” Robinson Stadium.
“At this point in the season, I think that a team can only go one of two ways,” said LSU head coach Jeff Brown. “Either you’re tired and things start going against you, or you can have a fresh victory like we had today where it looks like everyone on our team has improved. As long as we can continue to improve a little bit before every match, then it will give us a good chance to do something later on in the season.”
Saturday’s lopsided victory proved to be LSU’s third sweep of the 2003 season and its first against an SEC opponent since 2000. The Tigers swept both Alabama and South Carolina in conference matches during the 2000 campaign. The win also marked LSU’s biggest margin of victory over the Razorbacks since the 1999 season.
LSU (12-8, 5-6 SEC) jumped out to an early 1-0 lead on Saturday by posting identical 8-4 victories on all three doubles courts.
The Tigers’ No. 2 tandem comprised of Cory Ross and Sebastian Rutka clinched the doubles point with a win over Arkansas’ Matt Roberts and Adrians Zguns.
Ross and Rutka own an impressive 17-4 overall record on the season and a 12-2 mark in dual matches.
With the loss, the Razorbacks dropped to an overall record of 12-12 on the season and finished with a 3-8 mark versus SEC competition. Arkansas, the 28th-ranked team in the nation, picked up its three conference wins against 14th-ranked Alabama, 4-3, Mississippi State, 5-2, and the eighth-ranked Vanderbilt Commodores, 4-3.
“We played very well against a good team out there today,” Brown said. “We knew that Arkansas was going to play with a lot of enthusiasm no matter what the circumstances were and they have always seemed to play us tough, even when they weren’t ranked at all. We knew that they have a solid team and you’re always going to have to beat them, because they won’t give it to you.”
In singles play, LSU swept all six of the matches with five of the six Tigers earning straight-sets victories.
LSU’s Jason Hazley led the way with a 6-2, 6-1 victory over Eduardo Pacheco on court No. 2 and was followed shortly thereafter by Rutka and the 52nd-ranked Peter Richman. Richman downed Arkansas’ Aleksey Bubis on court No. 1, 6-4, 6-4, while Rutka clinched the Tiger victory with a 6-4, 6-2 win over the Razorbacks’ Rohan Gajjar on court No. 4. The win upped Rutka’s overall singles record on the season to 18-9.
On court No. 6, LSU’s Paul White used a first-set tiebreaker to dispose of the Hogs’ Talley Parker, 7-6(3), 6-2, while Bryan Fisher dropped Zguns, 6-3, 7-6(4) on court No. 3 and the 117th-ranked Ross outlasted Roberts in the No. 5 singles match. With the win, Ross upped his team-leading singles record to 21-10 on the season.
The 7-0 victory extended LSU’s winning streak against Arkansas to 13-straight matches and increased the Tigers’ all-time lead in the series to 15-3.
The 18th-ranked LSU men’s tennis team will next be in action on Monday, April 14, as the Tigers make up a previously postponed match against the Southern Methodist Mustangs in Dallas, Texas, at 1 p.m.
#18 LSU (12-8, 5-6 SEC) def. Arkansas (12-12, 3-8 SEC), 7-0
W.T. “Dub” Robinson Tennis Stadium – Baton Rouge, La.
Doubles
1. #21 Fisher/Hazley (LSU) def. Pacheco/Bubis (ARK), 8-4
2. Ross/Rutka (LSU) def. Roberts/Zguns (ARK), 8-4*
3. Richman/White (LSU) def. Gajjar/Parker (ARK), 8-4
Order of Finish: 3, 2, 1
Singles
1. #52 Peter Richman (LSU) def. Aleksey Bubis (ARK), 6-4, 6-4
2. Jason Hazley (LSU) def. Eduardo Pacheco (ARK), 6-2, 6-1
3. Bryan Fisher (LSU) def. Adrians Zguns (ARK), 6-3, 7-6(4)
4. Sebastian Rutka (LSU) def. Rohan Gajjar (ARK), 6-4, 6-2**
5. #117 Cory Ross (LSU) def. Matt Roberts (ARK), 6-2, 3-6, 6-3
6. Paul White (LSU) def. Talley Parker (ARK), 7-6(3), 6-2
Order of Finish: 2, 1, 4, 6, 3, 5
* Clinched the doubles point
** Clinched the match