BATON ROUGE – LSU men’s tennis fell to No. 7 Florida in Sunday’s SEC contest at W.T. “Dub” Robinson Stadium 7-0 in the Tigers’ second conference clash of the weekend.
The doubles point was a close race in the LSU-Florida matchup. Florida took the first win on court two when the Gators’ 43rd -ranked duo Sekou Bangoura and Joseph Burkhardt defeated LSU’s Sebastian Carlsson and Stefan Szacinski, 8-1.
Roger Anderson and Neal Skupski claimed the next court for LSU at the No. 1 spot as the duo toppled Florida’s No. 16 pair Antoine Benneteau and Alexandre Lacroix, 8-6. The ranked victory is the first the Tiger tandem.
On court three LSU’s Julien Gauthier and Olivier Borsos showed resiliency as the duo came back from a 4-2 deficit to Florida’s Billy Federhofer and Bob Van Overbeek to tie the match a 5-all. Although Gauthier and Borsos exhibited strong bounce-back ability, the Gator duo edged out the pair by an 8-6 mark to put Florida into a 1-0 lead.
LSU was unable to recover after dropping the doubles point and fell to top-10 Florida 7-0 after the Gators took each of singles courts. Borsos was the only Tiger to win a set after he held Nassim Slilam to a
6-0 mark in the first set on court six before Slilam posted second and third set victories to take the match. The Tigers are now 3-6 on the season and 1-1 in conference play.
“Neal and Roger did some great things,” LSU head coach Jeff Brown said. “Florida is a very talented team that did a great job of getting ahead and closing us out. We fought hard, but they are just ahead of us right now.”
The team will host non-conference opponent South Florida on March 9 at 3 p.m. in the “Dub” before hitting the road to return to conference competition against Mississippi State on March 12.
#7 FLORIDA 7, #73 LSU 0
March 7, 2010
W.T. “Dub” Robinson Stadium
Baton Rouge, La.
Singles
1. #6Alexandre Lacroix (UF) def. #44Neal Skupski (LSU), 7-5, 6-2
2. #121 Joseph Burkhardt (UF) def. Sebastian Carlsson (LSU), 6-3, 6-1
3. Antoine Benneteau (UF) def. Julien Gauthier (LSU), 6-3, 6-3
4. Bob Van Overbeek (UF) def. Stefan Szacinski (LSU), 6-1, 6-2
5. Sekou Bangoura (UF) def. Mark Bowtell (LSU) 6-3, 6-2
6. Nassim Slilam (UF) def. Olivier Borsos (LSU), 0-6, 6-2, 6-2
Doubles
1. Skupski/Anderson( LSU) def. #16Bennetau/Lacroix (UF), 8-6
2. #43Bangoura/Burkhardt (UF) def. Carlsson/Szacinski (LSU), 8-1
3. Federhofer/ Van Overbeek (UF) def. Gauthier/Borsos (LSU), 8-6
Order of Finish: Doubles (2, 1,3); Singles (2, 4, 5, 1, 3, 6)