LSU women’s tennis coach Tony Minnis never questioned if his team would snap out of its eight-match losing streak — it was only a matter of when.LSU (4-9, 1-3) upset No. 50 Mississippi State, 6-1, Friday afternoon at W.T. “Dub” Robinson Stadium, recording its first victory in nearly two months.”We needed some confidence, and we needed a win,” Minnis said. “The fact that we pretty much came out and dominated the match shows you how far they’ve come.”The Lady Tigers swept the doubles point with three 8-2 victories, which set the tone for a dominating singles performance.The 6-1 victory marked the largest margin of victory for the Lady Tigers in SEC play since the spring of 2008 when they cruised to a 6-1 victory against Ole Miss.”When you have a team with a sophomore and three freshmen in the top five, there’s a lot of learning,” Minnis said. “So it took a while to get everything set because we had so many new players.”Despite the renewed confidence stemming from Friday’s win, LSU fell to No. 22 Ole Miss (8-2, 3-1) , 7-0, Sunday afternoon in the first match of a doubleheader.LSU got behind early when Ole Miss’ Kristi Boxx and Karen Nijssen, the No. 12 doubles team in the country, clinched the doubles point with an 8-3 victory against sophomore Whitney Wolf and freshman Kaitlin Burns.But the Lady Tigers bounced back with a 7-0 blanking of their own against cross-town rival Southern in the second half of the doubleheader.LSU will host Tulane on Wednesday at 12 p.m. before a 3 p.m. matchup against Grambling.TIGERS STUN BULLDOGSThe No. 62 LSU men’s tennis capped a furious rally Friday afternoon to record a 4-3 come-from-behind victory at No. 49 Mississippi State (6-6, 0-3 SEC).The Tigers (4-7, 2-2) rallied back from a 3-0 deficit with singles wins from sophomores Mark Bowtell and Neal Skupski and junior Julien Gauthier.Junior Sebastian Carlsson closed out the third set against the Bulldogs’ Artem Ilyushin to clinch the match for LSU, 6-3, 6-7 (7), 6-3. “This match was one of our better comebacks in recent memory,” said LSU coach Jeff Brown. “It was good for our team to be able to have that experience and get the win after long odds.”
The Tigers almost rallied back from a similar situation Sunday against No. 13 Ole Miss (10-2, 2-1 SEC), but dropped a 4-3 decision to the Rebels. After clawing back from an early deficit, LSU fought back to close the match to 3-2. Carlsson rallied back to force a third-set against No. 81 Marcel Thiemann and went up an early break in the third before Thiemann stormed back to win the match for Ole Miss.LSU returns home Friday to host Wake Forest at 3 p.m.—-Contact Sean Isabella at [email protected]