BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s tennis team closes out its 2005 home schedule Sunday with a 1 p.m. contest with 23rd-ranked Mississippi State.
“We need to make sure to come out and not do what we did Friday against Ole Miss,” head coach Tony Minnis said. “We’re down right now, but I still have a lot of confidence that we’re very good. And if we come out and play hard with the type of intensity we’re capable of, then we are capable of beating any team.”
Amanda Mang, the team’s lone senior who is from New Orleans, will be honored prior to the match.
Then she will try to earn her 63rd career singles win in her final appearance at W.T. Robinson Tennis Stadium.
The Lady Tigers will try to recover from a lackluster performance Friday against Ole Miss, in which they earned their fifth straight loss.
The 2-5 loss placed LSU at 7-8 overall and dropped them to 1-6 conference play.
“We just need to play hard,” Minnis commented. “We’ve played top-10 teams hard all year long, and we need to do that no matter who we play.”
Mississippi State enters the match with a 10-3 overall record. They are also over .500 in the SEC, leading the Western Division with a 4-3 record.
The Bulldogs are fresh off a win over Arkansas on Friday.
Sophomore Zsuzsanna Fodor ranks at 21st in the country in singles for MSU, and with one more win could claim the top spot on most wins in a single season by an MSU women’s tennis player. Fodor is also listed in the doubles poll at No. 20 with partner Anastasia Kugakolova.
The teams met last year in Starkville, Miss., with the Lady Tigers earning the 5-2 victory.