BATON ROUGE — For the ninth-straight time, the 19th-ranked LSU men’s tennis team earned a berth in the NCAA Tournament on Wednesday as the Tigers learned that they will face South Alabama in the first round on Saturday, May 10, at 3 p.m. at Tulane’s Goldring Tennis Stadium in New Orleans.
The 15th-ranked Tulane Green Wave will face Southern University in the other first-round matchup.
“South Alabama has a good team this year,” said LSU head coach Jeff Brown. “We know about a couple of their guys that have been in their lineup over the last few years and they have always been a tough, fighting team. We’re looking forward to that match and we know that it will be a battle.”
LSU heads into the upcoming NCAA Tournament with a 13-10 overall record on the season after earning a second-place finish in the highly-competitive Western Division of the Southeastern Conference. The Tigers ended the regular season with a 5-6 mark against conference opponents and advanced to the quarterfinal round of the SEC Tournament.
Nine of LSU’s 10 losses this season have come against opponents currently ranked among the nation’s top-20 teams. In hard-fought contests, the Tigers have fallen prey to No. 1 Illinois, No. 2 Florida, No. 6 Vanderbilt, No. 8 Ole Miss, No. 10 Texas A&M, No. 13 Kentucky, No. 16 Alabama, No. 18 South Carolina and the 20th-ranked Georgia Bulldogs.
South Alabama enters the first-round matchup as the 56th-ranked team in the nation as the Jaguars own an impressive 19-7 overall record on the season.
South Alabama won its sixth-straight Sun Belt Conference title this year and its 15th conference championship of all time.
“If we win our first match, then we will play either Tulane or Southern and we have a pretty good rivalry with both of those institutions,” Brown said. “We’ve already agreed with Tulane to get our rivalry started again with a match this season and if we play them this year, then we will just be able to get it kicked off a bit earlier.”
LSU and South Alabama have not faced each other since the 1992 season. The Tigers own a significant 6-0 advantage in the all-time series and have outscored South Alabama, 45-9. In the last three meeting between the two teams, LSU won handily by scores of 9-0, 6-0 and 9-0.
The winner of the LSU vs. South Alabama matchup will face the winner of Tulane and Southern in the second-round matchup on Sunday, May 11.
“We will have so many of our fans there that it will feel almost like a home regional,” said Brown. “It will be a lot better than last season where we played in Texas A&M and only had about 10 people that were able to travel for us, so having it at Tulane is such an advantage for us. We’re going to have a good crowd no matter who we’re playing and it is a good thing for us to be playing in New Orleans.”
The 19th-ranked LSU men’s tennis team will face the South Alabama Jaguars in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday at the Goldring Tennis Stadium on the campus of Tulane University in New Orleans.