Commodores Set for SEC Tournament

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Vanderbilt men’s tennis will begin its postseason journey on Wednesday when play starts at the SEC Tournament, hosted this spring by South Carolina at the Carolina Tennis Center.

The Commodores, seeded 13th in the event, will take on No. 12 seed Alabama at 9 a.m. CT in the first of three matches on the opening day of the championship. The winner will advance to face fifth-seeded Tennessee on Thursday afternoon.

Vandy finished the regular season with a 12-13 overall mark after concluding league play 4-10, which included dropping a 4-0 decision to the Crimson Tide (14-11) on March 2 in Tuscaloosa. Alabama leads the all-time series, 44-28, with the Dores’ most recent victory over the Tide coming during the 2022-23 season.

The two programs last met at the SEC Tournament in the first round of the 2022 event, with Alabama earning a 4-3 decision. Vanderbilt most recently defeated the Crimson Tide in the postseason after claiming a 4-2 first-round win in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2017.

In the most recent ITA ratings, Alabama enters the postseason No. 38 while Vandy is 43rd in the nation.

Danil Panarin and Henry Ruger led the Commodores in the regular season with six SEC singles victories each, with the latter posting a team-high 18 wins overall. Michael Ross is 14-12 in 2024-25 coming into the tournament, with Nathan Cox and Pablo Martinez Gomez rounding out the top half of the lineup and Hugo Coquelin returning at the No. 6 position last weekend to help clinch Vandy’s Senior Day win over No. 22 Oklahoma on Saturday.

The Dores’ No. 1 doubles team of Ross and Cox comes into the match 35th in the ratings released by the ITA Tuesday.

The Crimson Tide are led by Filip Planinsek, 18th in this week’s ITA singles rankings, who has gone 16-3 thus far at No. 1 singles in dual match competition. Roan Jones begins the SEC Tournament No. 79 in the ITA ratings with a team-best 21 singles wins, while Alabama also has a pair of doubles teams ranked among the top 40 in the country with Damien Nezar and Andrii Zimnokh entering play No. 22 and Planinsek and Matic Kriznik 36th.

The Commodores earned the program’s lone SEC Tournament title in 2003 in Oxford, Mississippi, and have advanced to the quarterfinals or beyond at the championship on 10 occasions after last accomplishing the feat in 2019.