BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s tennis team finished the 2000-01 dual-match season as the 13th-ranked team in the nation on Friday, as the final WingspanBank.com Collegiate Tennis Rankings were released by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association.
“It was quite an accomplishment for this team to finish 13th in the nation,” said LSU head coach Jeff Brown. “Every season we have high expectations from our guys and I’m extremely proud of how they finished this year. We had to replace three of our top seniors from last season and our guys stepped up and enabled us to make it back to Athens (Ga.).”
The Tigers ended the year ranked in the top 20 for the seventh-straight season and finished in the Sweet 16 with an overall record of 16-8. The LSU men’s tennis program concluded its 18th-straight season with a top-25 ranking and earned a birth in the NCAA Championships for the seventh year-in-a-row.
LSU’s Ajay Ramaswami capped his phenomenal senior season with a final ranking of No. 16 on Friday. Ramaswami finished the year with an overall record of 29-15 and advanced to the round of 16 in the NCAA Singles Championships. He became the first Tiger player to reach the Sweet 16 since former LSU great, Tamer El Sawy, advanced to the semifinal round in 1993.
The Tigers’ junior from Newcastle, England, Dan Kiernan, ended the 2001 dual-match season ranked in both singles and doubles play. Kiernan’s outstanding 25-8 final record earned him the No. 51 singles ranking, while he teamed up with freshman, Sebastian Rutka, to form the 29th-ranked doubles team in the nation.
Men’s Tennis Top 25 – Final Ranking
Team Pts.
1. Georgia 132.79
2. Stanford 120.39
3. UCLA 119.23
4. Tennessee 115.09
5. TCU 111.59
6. SMU 106.45
7. Texas A&M 105.41
8. Duke 105.33
9. South Alabama 82.00
10. Ole Miss 79.07
11. Miami (Florida) 74.32
12. Illinois 70.73
13. LSU 69.92
14. Mississippi St. 69.38
15. California 68.44
16. Notre Dame 66.61
17. Washington 64.44
18. Pepperdine 60.53
19. Alabama 60.27
20. USC 59.59
21. Auburn 55.59
22. Ohio State 54.57
23. Texas 54.37
24. Fresno State 54.17
25. Arkansas 47.84