AUBURN, Ala. – The Auburn women's tennis team continues Southeastern Conference play this weekend as they take on Vanderbilt and Kentucky on the road.
The Tigers (7-5, 0-2 SEC) will travel to Nashville to face No. 17 Vanderbilt at 2:30 p.m. CT Friday, then head up the road to Lexington to take on No. 34 Kentucky at 11 a.m. CT Sunday.
"These are two teams that will be able to push us, but these are also two teams that we can beat," Auburn head coach Caroline Lilley said. "It's an exciting weekend for us. SEC matches on the road are difficult, but I know if we keep competing like we've competed the last couple of weeks, we're going to keep earning those same opportunities that we earned this weekend."
Auburn came tantalizingly close to picking up two victories last weekend to kick off conference play. The Tigers pushed both South Carolina and Florida to the brink, but came up just short in a 4-2 loss to the Gamecocks and a 4-3 setback against the Gators.
"I'm honest to a fault," Lilley said. "At times we might win a match and I'm not very pleased. This weekend, we lost two matches, and I wouldn't say I'm satisfied, but I was incredibly proud of them. We fought our tails off. We asked them before each of those matches to make sure neither of those teams wants to play Auburn again. And that's exactly what they did."
Freshman Selin Ovunc was stellar in both matches last week, going 2-0 at the No. 2 singles spot and defeating a pair of nationally ranked opponents. For her efforts, she was named SEC Freshman of the Week, the first weekly honor for an Auburn women's tennis player since the 2018 season. She also moved into the national rankings for the first time, moving up to No. 64 in the ITA singles rankings. Senior Taylor Russo is also ranked, coming in at No. 83 in singles. Together, the doubles team of Ovunc and Russo is ranked No. 14 nationally.
Vanderbilt (5-3, 1-1) split a pair of matches to open conference play last weekend, falling at home to LSU before defeating Mississippi State on the road. The Commodores have a ranked doubles team in No. 22 Georgia Drummy/Christina Rosca; in singles, Rosca is ranked No. 18 and Drummy is No. 28.
Kentucky (8-5, 1-1) also had a split weekend to kick off league play. The Wildcats defeated Texas A&M at home before falling on the road at Ole Miss. The Wildcats have no ranked players in singles but boast the No. 27-ranked doubles team in Lesedi Jacobs and Akvile Parazinskaite.
Links to live scoring and live video for both matches are available on the schedule page at AuburnTigers.com.
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