BATON ROUGE — LSU’s 24th-ranked men’s tennis team will face its toughest test of the season Sunday when they try to knock off the No. 1 ranked and undefeated Georgia Bulldogs at 1 p.m. at W. T. Robinson Tennis Stadium.
The Tigers (8-4, 1-0 SEC) will look to follow up on a, 4-3, comeback win Friday over Tennessee with a second conference victory. Friday’s win snapped a two match-losing streak for LSU, who will need to be at the top of their game Sunday against the Bulldogs.
Georgia (11-0, 1-0 SEC) was a unanimous No. 1 pick in the latest ITA poll released Tuesday and the Bulldogs is fresh off of a 5-2 win over Arkansas in Fayetteville. Last month Georgia claimed the title at the ITA National Indoor Team Championships.
LSU head coach Jeff Brown is confident in his team’s ability to play with the top programs in the nation and says the Tigers won’t give Georgia in special treatment.
“We’re going to play them just like anybody else and then count up the points at the end,” Brown said. “We have to play with our best effort and that’s exactly what I expect us to do.”
The two teams last met in the 2005 NCAA Tournament in College Station, Texas. The Bulldogs ended LSU’s season with a, 4-0, win in the round of 16. The Tigers also fell to Georgia during the 2005 regular season, losing 5-2 to the Dawgs in Athens.
Sunday’s match should be highlighted by the doubles play. Georgia has yet to lose a doubles point this season, while the Tigers have dropped the early point on only three occasions. Both schools feature two ranked doubles pairs.
It was the Bulldog’s tandem Antonio Ruiz and John Isner who defeated LSU’s Ken Skupski and Mark Growcott in the finals of the NCAA Doubles Championships last season. The duos will match up again tomorrow on the No. 1 court.