The Tigers opened up their conference season with a win over Vanderbilt on Friday, but their conference record didn’t stay unblemished for long. Facing their first ranked conference opponent in No. 16 Kentucky on Sunday, they fell very short of a win, not earning a single point against the Wildcats.  

At face value, that loss looks bad and doesn’t correlate with the belief that the LSU men’s tennis team has improved since last season. In last year’s shortened season, they didn’t defeat a single top-25 SEC opponent, falling short of upsetting South Carolina and getting crushed by Florida in their only top-25 matchups of the year.  

This tends to happen when the match is a clinch match (where they only play to four points instead of playing out). If LSU were winning on courts when the match is clinched, they wouldn’t get the chance to play out those matches and the score would reflect that. 

For example, if LSU vs. UL-Lafayette had been a clinch match, it would have been 4-0 instead of 4-3 because LSU earned four points before UL-Lafayette scored.  

This is relevant for a few reasons. One, LSU had three courts in play when Kentucky clinched: one where the Tigers had a lead, one that just started and one that was about to start (Kentucky had four courts so Courts Five and Six had to wait).  

LSU’s Ronald Hohmann held a 3-2 lead in the third set against No. 45 Liam Draxl on Court One. While this match could have gone either way, if he wins, that’s a point for the Tigers. If Courts Five and Six go LSU’s way, that score suddenly looks a lot closer.  

But where this truly becomes relevant is with LSU’s doubles play.  

The first win in doubles went to the Tigers, which went to Boris Kozlov and Nick Watson on Court Three. All they needed was for either Court One or Two to go the Tigers’ way, and they would’ve had the doubles point.  

Each of those sat at 5-5 at one point, but unfortunately, they each ended in close losses. LSU was potentially one or two points away from taking the doubles point, which would have been huge for team morale and potentially, the outcome of the match.  

But this isn’t meant to show how LSU could’ve won or how they should’ve won. It’s meant to show that LSU had a bigger chance to win than the scoreboard depicts. If a few points here and there went the other way, Ronald Hohmann held his lead until the end and Courts Five and Six went LSU’s way, who knows what could’ve happened, but either way, the Tigers still lost.  

But Kentucky is currently one of the best teams in the SEC, with a record of 11-1, a No. 16 ranking in the nation and one of the best singles players in the country in Liam Draxl. The fact that the Tigers had a chance isn’t meaningless based on that.  

They will get their chance to prove themselves against top competition again soon, as they face off against No. 11 Florida and No. 20 South Carolina this weekend. A win in either of these matches would be huge for the Tigers, and they would potentially have an argument for being ranked in the top-25 themselves.