BATON ROUGE – The LSU men’s tennis team will take a break from conference competition to face 21st-ranked Wake Forest Friday in a match slated for 3 p.m. in W. T. “Dub” Robinson Tennis Stadium.
LSU (4-7, 2-2 SEC) and Wake Forest both enter Friday’s contest after dropping their last match. The Tigers narrowly fell to then-13th-ranked Ole Miss in Oxford, Miss. March 14, 4-3, and the Demon Deacons slipped to a 6-3 record after the third-ranked USC Trojans posted a 5-2 score on March 10 in Los Angeles.
“We are looking forward to this match,” LSU head coach Jeff Brown said. “We’ve seen some movement with players finding their comfort zone, and after working some guys around, I think we’ve found our best lineup. That can pay dividends.”
Both teams feature nationally-ranked players. Sophomore Neal Skupski leads the Tigers at No. 46 in the nation with a 4-6 dual record and is 6-5 overall against nationally-ranked opponents.
Wake Forest has three players in the singles rankings, No. 29 Tripper Carleton, No. 56 Steven Forman and No. 92 Iain Atkinson. Carleton and Forman each hold a 7-2 record, and Atkinson checks in at 5-4. In doubles, Forman and Atkinson combine to make the No. 16 duo at 5-4 on the season.
The two teams have met only once in the history of the programs with the match going to LSU, 6-0, in 1987 for the Tigers to hold the 1-0 overall record.