BATON ROUGE — Mark Bowtell of the LSU men’s tennis team received the Southeastern Conference Freshman of the Week honor, the league office announced on Tuesday.
Bowtell proved pivotal in LSU’s defeat of both UL-Lafayette and New Orleans last Saturday as the Tigers blanked both teams by a 4-0 mark.
In the first match of the day on Saturday against ULL, Bowtell and partner James Cluskey claimed a swift 8-1 victory over Ragin’ Cajuns Piotr Banas and Piotr Olechowski. The duo was first off the courts and poised the Tigers to capture the doubles point.
Bowtell and Cluskey once again teamed up against UNO as the Tiger tandem squared off against Vinay Kamineni and Jose Gaspar. As the Tigers split on courts one and two, the LSU duo clinched the point for LSU on court three, overcoming Kamineni and Gaspar, 8-5. The victory pushed the undefeated duo’s record to 5-0 on the season.
In addition to clinching the doubles point for LSU against UNO, Bowtell dealt the final blow to the Privateers as he took down Oliver Cuthill in straight sets, 6-2, 6-2, to clinch the overall match for the Tigers as well.
Bowtell and the rest of the Tigers return to action on Friday against Auburn, kicking off SEC play in a match slated for 2 p.m. at W.T. “Dub” Robinson Stadium.