BATON ROUGE — The No. 13-ranked. LSU men’s tennis team will try to knock off fourth-ranked Ole Miss (14-1, 5-0) Friday at 4 p.m. at the W.T. Robinson Tennis Stadium.
LSU (10-2, 2-2) has recorded wins over two top-15 teams this season, but the Rebels will be the first top-ten team they have faced.
“Everybody’s pretty confident at this point in the SEC,” said LSU head coach Jeff Brown. “We’re not looking at rankings.”
The Tigers will have to overcome Ole Miss’ proven lineup, which includes fourth-ranked Catalin Gard, 29th-ranked Claes Lindholm and 82nd-ranked Paul Ciorascu. The Rebels were ranked second for five consecutive weeks before last week’s poll was released.
“They have a talented lineup that has had a lot of success this season,” Brown said. “They’ve been consistent.”
The battle for the doubles point will feature four ranked teams. Ole Miss’ eighth-ranked team of Gard and Ciorascu is 13-4 overall this season. One of those wins was a 9-8 (2) decision over LSU’s 23rd-ranked team of Bryan Fisher and Jason Hazley in the SEC Indoor Tournament. The duos will likely face each other at No. 1 doubles.
LSU’s Peter Richman and Ken Skupski entered the national doubles rankings at No. 34 this week. They face Ole Miss’ 26th-ranked Claes Lindholm and Eric Claesson at No. 2 doubles.
Skupski, who jumped to 28th in the national singles rankings this week, has beaten three top-50 opponents in his last four matches, including wins over the 10th and 16th-ranked players.
The Tigers return home after a 5-2 road win over Vanderbilt in their last match. That victory came after their worst loss of the season, a 6-1 defeat from Kentucky.
“We learned how intense we have to play to be our best,” Brown said.
The Rebels have won the last two matches with LSU, but the Tigers hold a 42-7 advantage in the all-time series.