BATON ROUGE, La. – The No. 33 LSU Tigers upset the No. 11 Vanderbilt men’s tennis team, 4-1, Sunday afternoon in the Dub Tennis Center. With the loss the Commodores own a 13-5 overall record and 3-3 mark in SEC action.
“It was not one of our better matches of the year, in fact it was one of our worst matches,” said head coach Ian Duvenhage. “We as a team we didn’t do a very good job in a number of departments… not giving enough energy and intensity coming out in doubles.”
The Commodores’ Pen Binet and Baker Newman brought in their fourth straight doubles win in an easy 6-1 win over Tam Trinh/Eric Perez on court two, but following the victory Vandy could not pull of wins on courts one and three to seal the point.
Suresh Eswaran and Daniel Valent dropped their third match in a row in a 6-1 loss to Chris Simpson and Justin Butsch. With the doubles point at 1-all the match rested on the outcome of court one. No. 1 Gonzales Austin and Rhys Johnson fell in their first match of the spring in a hard 6-4 loss to No. 18 Boris Arias and Jordan Daigle. The tandem now owns a 12-1 dual-match record.
With the setback, Vandy hopped to pull themselves out of the deficit in singles, but were going against an LSU team who owned an undefeated home record.
Austin generated Vanderbilt’s sole singles win as he defeated No. 85 Jordan Daigle; 6-2, 6-4. Following the senior’s win, the Tigers pulled off the victory coming out on top in the No. three, four and five positions.
“In singles… just not enough discipline and execution, our attitudes were not great. With some rare exceptions I thought AJ (Austin) did great in singles, but all in all as far as a team effort goes it was not very good. We’ve got to get our acts together this week and get ready for a big weekend and a big match against Tennessee on Thursday. ”
Make sure to pull out your black and gold as VU hosts in-state rival Tennessee on Thursday at 4:00 p.m. On Saturday the Kentucky Wildcats come to town to face-off against the `Dores at 1:00 p.m.
#33 LSU 4, #11 Vanderbilt 1
Singles competition
1. #10 Gonzales Austin (VANDY) def. #85 Jordan Daigle (LSU) 6-2, 6-4
2. #117 Chris Simpson (LSU) vs. Rhys Johnson (VANDY) 6-3, 5-6, unfinished
3. Tam Trinh (LSU) def. Daniel Valent (VANDY) 7-5, 6-4
4. Justin Butsch (LSU) def. Kris Yee (VANDY) 6-2, 6-1
5. Boris Arias (LSU) def. Suresh Eswaran (VANDY) 6-3, 6-3
6. Andrew Korinek (LSU) vs. Jeffrey Offerdahl (VANDY) 6-3, 4-6, 2-0, unfinished
Doubles competition
1. #18 Boris Arias/Jordan Daigle (LSU) def. #1 Gonzales Austin/Rhys Johnson (VANDY) 6-4
2. Baker Newman/Pen Binet (VANDY) def. Tam Trinh/Eric Perez (LSU) 6-1
3. Chris Simpson/Justin Butsch (LSU) def. Suresh Eswaran/Daniel Valent (VANDY) 6-1
Match Notes:
Vanderbilt 13-4 (3-2 SEC); National ranking #11
LSU 12-3, (3-2 SEC); National ranking #33
Order of finish: Doubles (3,2,1); Singles (1,4,5,3)
