BATON ROUGE — Coming off one of the greatest weekends in LSU women’s tennis history, the team was rewarded by jumping eight spots in the national rankings to No. 16 while Staten Spencer earned Southeastern Conference Player of the Week honors Tuesday.
LSU (13-6, 3-4 SEC) defeated No. 16 Florida for the first time in program history as the Lady Tigers won the doubles point and took three singles matches to win, 4-3. LSU followed the historic win by beating South Carolina for only the third time, 5-2 Sunday on Senior Day at W.T. “Dub” Robinson Stadium.
One of the catalysts for the outstanding victories was Spencer, who was phenomenal in her last home weekend as a Lady Tiger. The senior from Memphis, Tenn., was instrumental in leading LSU to victory over Florida by cruising to wins in doubles and singles.
Spencer and Nicole Kantor dominated the Gators’ Brooke Allen and Barbara Pinterova 8-2 on Court 3 to help LSU win the doubles point. Spencer followed her outstanding doubles performance by breezing past Allen 6-1, 6-1 on Court 6 to give LSU a 2-1 lead.
Against South Carolina, Spencer was equally outstanding as she and Kantor helped LSU win the doubles point by downing Suzanna Mansour and Dijana Stojic 8-3. On Court 6, Spencer quickly increased LSU’s momentum by delivering a 6-3, 6-0 victory over Mansour, capping her dominant sweep of doubles and singles play for the weekend.
With the singles wins, Spencer improved her record in SEC play to 4-3, and she and Kantor ran their doubles record to 4-2 against SEC competition with their weekend sweep.
The honor is the first of Spencer’s career.
Northwestern remained No. 1 in the latest Campbell/ITA College Tennis Rankings, but the Lady Tigers were the biggest movers by jumping from No. 24 to No. 16.
Just as it has all season, the SEC continued to dominant the rankings as an impressive eight teams were ranked in the top 25 and 11 of 12 SEC teams were in the top 30.
LSU will be back in action Friday when the Lady Tigers travel to Oxford, Miss., to take on Ole Miss, which sits just outside the top 25 at No. 28, at 3 p.m. CDT at the Palmer/Salloum Tennis Center.
Rank School Average (Last Week)
1. Northwestern 88.03 (1)
2. Georgia 76.20 (2)
3. Baylor 72.84 (4)
4. Notre Dame 70.51 (3)
5. Duke 69.75 (9)
6. Miami (Fla.) 68.31 (5)
7. Georgia Tech 67.47 (6)
8. California 66.21 (8)
9. USC 62.99 (7)
10. Stanford 56.12 (10)
11. UCLA 56.01 (12)
12. Clemson 55.29 (11)
13. Tennessee 51.04 (13)
14. Arkansas 44.54 (15)
15. Fresno State 44.27 (14)
16. LSU 40.97 (24)
17. Vanderbilt 40.40 (19)
18. Florida State 40.02 (17)
19. North Carolina 39.17 (18)
20. Michigan 37.32 (23)
21. Florida 37.06 (16)
22. SMU 35.98 (22)
23. Kentucky 35.69 (20)
24. South Carolina 31.34 (30)
25. Arizona State 30.98 (21)
Women's Tennis Jumps to No. 16; Spencer Honored