BATON ROUGE – LSU men’s tennis senior Sebastian Carlsson was named SEC Player of the Week for his outstanding performance in LSU’s 5-2 victory over No. 29 Rice on Feb. 6, the league announced Tuesday.
Carlsson, a 2011 team captain and one of only two seniors on the team, once again proved to be a clutch performer by capturing two important victories over the higher-ranked Owls.
With the first two doubles matches split at one apiece, Carlsson and partner Neal Skupski clinched the doubles point with an 8-2 win over Rice’s Christian Saravia and Michael Nusslein at No. 1 singles.
The Uppsala, Sweden, native then competed at No. 3 singles against Rice’s Sam Garford-Bles. After splitting the first two sets 6-4, 4-6, and LSU leading the match 3-1, Carlsson blanked Garford-Bles 6-0 in the third set to the seal the first dual victory of the season for the Tigers.
Carlsson has won his last three singles matches, and he and Skupski are on a four-match doubles win streak. He currently has 75 singles victories in his career, just five shy of 20th place on the LSU all-time wins list.
This is the first SEC Player of the Week honor for Carlsson, and the first for the Tigers since Michael Venus in March of 2009.
Carlsson was named SEC Freshman of the Week four times in 2008 (Feb. 26, March 18, May 1 and May 8).
After three-straight home matches, Carlsson and the No. 33 Tigers hit the road to Columbus, Ohio, to square off against the fourth-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes on Saturday at 6 p.m. CST.
PAST LSU MEN’S TENNIS SEC PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Year Player (Date)
2000 Jesse Smatt (3/28)
2005 Jason Hazley (2/28)
2006 Ken Skupski (1/24)
2006 Danny Bryan (3/28)
2006 Colt Gaston (4/4)
2008 Michael Venus (4/8)
2009 Michael Venus (3/23)
2011 Sebastian Carlsson (2/9)