The Southeastern Conference dominates men’s tennis, with five teams in the top-15. The Tigers could face one of these teams in No. 10 Texas A&M this weekend, along with a lower-ranked Mississippi State and unranked Arkansas.
Despite sporting a difficult schedule, Texas A&M finished last season with a 12-3 record. All losses came against teams ranked No. 7 and above, and they defeated seven teams in the top-50, including a four-match streak that featured SEC heavyweights, South Carolina and Florida.
They are strong contenders to win the SEC, the second-highest ranked team in the conference behind Florida, and that is not all. The team’s stars include No. 3 singles player, Valentin Vacherot, two other players ranked above No. 35 and two ranked doubles teams.
If this is the same LSU team as last year, they do not currently stand at the same level as Texas A&M. The closest comparison to the Aggies that the Tigers faced last year was No. 9 Florida, who swept them 7-0.
A closer match for the Tigers is No. 39 Mississippi State. The teams rank within ten spots of each other (LSU currently sits at No. 46) and had similar W-L records last season.
Mississippi State finished off last season with a 9-6 record, with all but one loss being to teams that ranked above No. 30. However, their wins weren’t incredibly impressive and were overshadowed by rough losses.
An example of this came at the beginning of February, where they defeated No. 21 Miami but followed that strong win by getting swept by No. 47 Tulane and losing to No. 27 Texas Tech.
The team features two ranked singles players and two ranked doubles teams, as opposed to LSU’s one ranked singles player and no ranked doubles teams. This shows why Mississippi State is ranked higher than LSU on paper, but that doesn’t mean the Tigers can’t defeat this team.
These teams missed out on playing each other by just a few days last season, with a match scheduled for March 15.
The lowest ranked team LSU could face this weekend is unranked Arkansas. The Razorbacks finished last season with a 6-6 record, with their notable matches being unranked losses to Wichita State and Tulsa, a hard-fought, 3-4 loss against No. 15 Ole Miss and a win over No. 30 Baylor.
While they aren’t as big of a challenge as the other two teams, they are still an even match for the Tigers.
An interesting thing to take note of is the combined scoring trend for LSU’s matches against these teams over the past few years. In 2017-2018, the Tigers lost by a combined score of 1-19, but they made things closer the next year (7-11), even pulling off a victory against Arkansas.
One thing is for sure, this Tigers team has vastly grown since the last time they’ve faced these teams. It should be interesting to see what they can do this weekend.
