BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s tennis team jumped one spot to No. 14 in the latest Intercollegiate Tennis Association Rankings released Tuesday.
LSU’s top double team of Danny Bryan and Colt Gaston received their highest ranking as a duo, appearing at No. 3.
LSU (16-6, 7-4 SEC) hosted the Southeastern Conference Tournament this past week. The Tigers defeated the Tennessee Volunteers, 4-2, in the quarterfinals and were eliminated in the semifinals in a hard fought match against the Tournament Champion Georgia Bulldogs, 4-1.
Bryan and Gaston’s high ranking comes at no surprise as they have won 32 of their last 35 matches. Two of their three losses during that run were against the No. 1 ranked team of Georgia’s John Isner and Luis Flores. The Tiger tandem defeated the No. 21-ranked duo Bobby Cameron and Kaden Hensel of Tennessee, 8-5, in the SEC tournament quarterfinals. The win is the sixth for the LSU pair against a ranked team.
Also in doubles, James Cluskey and Ken Skupski appeared at No. 20.
In singles, Senior Skupski jumped one spot to No. 24. The First-Team All-SEC member has compiled 21 wins this season, including 11 against ranked opponents.
LSU’s other co-captain, Bryan, jumped 16 spots to No. 33. The New Orleans native clinched LSU’s quarterfinals victory over Tennessee by defeating No.117-ranked Davey Sandgren, 7-5, 6-4. Bryan picked up one of the biggest wins of his career against Georgia when he defeated No. 11-ranked Travis Helgeson by an impressive 6-3, 6-0 score.
Junior Kevin Dessauer is ranked at No. 97. The SEC Scholar Athlete of the Year is second on the team with 22 wins.
LSU will not play again until May 11 in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The Tigers will learn their tournament fate May 1 when selections are announced on ESPNews at 2:30 p.m. According the NCAA selection procedure, the 16 highest-ranked teams will receive bids to host the first two rounds of the tournament.