BATON ROUGE — After a two week break the 24th-ranked LSU women’s tennis team will travel to Los Angeles, Calif., to face No. 63 DePaul Saturday at 11 a.m. CST at UCLA’s Los Angeles Tennis Center in the ITA Kick-Off Weekend.
This season marks the first year of the ITA Kick-Off Weekend as well as the first showdown between LSU and DePaul. The weekend will serve as rounds one and two of the National Indoor Championships, which will be held Feb. 13-16 at the University of Wisconsin.
The top 15 ranked schools serve as host sites for the weekend, and the 15 teams that win both of their matches will go on to compete at the National Indoor Championships along with host Wisconsin.
“We’re very happy to have an opportunity to compete for the Indoor National Championships. We expect a very tough match with DePaul. Any team that’s in this field is really good, and we expect a high quality match,” said head coach Tony Minnis.
LSU (2-0) opened the season strong earlier this month by defeating No. 57 Colorado and No. 49 New Mexico led by seniors Megan Falcon and Mykala Hedberg, who are the 17th-ranked doubles team in the nation with a record of 14-3. Falcon is ranked fifth in singles and holds a season record of 15-4. Falcon will look to extend her career record of 80-14 this weekend.
DePaul (3-0) opened its season by defeating No. 68 Wisconsin, 6-1 then swept Cleveland State and the University of Chicago, 7-0. The Blue Demons are led by senior Dunja Antunovic who is ranked No. 109 nationally in singles with a 12-7 record. In doubles Antunovic and junior Kirsten Gambrell form the nation’s 36th-ranked duo and they have a 9-6 overall record, including a 3-0 mark in dual matches.
The Lady Tigers are guaranteed to play two matches, playing the second match Sunday against the winner/loser of the UCLA/Minnesota match.