BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s tennis team qualified for its ninth-consecutive NCAA Tournament on Wednesday as the Lady Tigers earned a trip to College Station, Texas, where they will face the 28th-ranked Texas A&M Lady Aggies in the first round of competition on Friday, May 9, at 7 p.m.
The fourth-ranked Cal Lady Bears will face off against Army in the other first-round matchup at the Texas A&M Tennis Center.
“I think that we played very well at the end of the season,” said LSU head coach Tony Minnis. “We played a very tough schedule this year and we were finally able to come up with some big wins at the end which helped us to get into the tournament. I’m really happy. I’m really excited and I think that this will be the healthiest that our team has been all year.”
LSU heads into its ninth-consecutive NCAA Tournament with an overall record of 12-12 on the season after finishing as the second-place team in the highly-competitive Western Division of the Southeastern Conference. The Lady Tigers have played against what is arguably the nation’s toughest schedule this season with 18 of their 24 matches coming against nationally-ranked opponents.
The Lady Tigers have defeated six top-75 ranked opponents this season. During the 2003 dual-match campaign, LSU has posted victories over No. 26 Tulane, No. 31 Ohio State, No. 31 Auburn (Ohio State and Auburn were ranked No. 31 at different times), No. 51 Ole Miss, No. 59 Arkansas and the 71st-ranked Southern Methodist Lady Mustangs.
Texas A&M, which qualified for its fourth-consecutive NCAA Tournament on Wednesday, will enter its matchup against LSU with an overall record of 19-10 on the year. The Lady Aggies won their first Big 12 Championship title this season and recorded a 5-2 victory over LSU on Feb. 15.
“We are really pumped up to play Texas A&M,” Minnis said. “We played them earlier in the year, but before we start thinking about them, we need to have another good, solid week of practice. Getting into the tournament for nine-straight years is really a big accomplishment and I think that it is a credit to our consistency. I would have liked to have been seeded higher, but at this point I’m just happy that we made it.”
By earning its ninth-consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance on Wednesday, the LSU women’s tennis program became one of only 13 program’s in the nation to reach nine-straight NCAA Tournaments.
The prestigious accomplishment moved LSU into an elite group of women’s tennis teams that includes the following programs: Arizona State, California, Duke, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Southern California, Tennessee, Texas, UCLA and Vanderbilt.
LSU and Texas A&M have faced off against each other 25 times in the all-time series between the schools. The Lady Aggies own a 14-11 overall record in the rivalry and have won the previous three contests. LSU’s last victory versus Texas A&M came during the 2000 dual-match season as the Lady Tigers’ posted a 5-4 win.
The LSU women’s tennis team will begin play in the 2003 NCAA Tournament on Friday, May 9, as the Lady Tigers challenge the 28th-ranked Texas A&M Lady Aggies in College Station, Texas.