No. 42 Auburn (7-14, 3-9 SEC) opens SEC championship tournament play facing No. 13 South Carolina (13-8, 7-5) Tuesday morning in action at the George M. Billingsley Tennis Center in Fayetteville, Ark.
This second-round match will begin at 9 a.m. Tuesday; the winner will face No. 9 Georgia (14-5, 8-4) in third-round action on Wednesday morning.
"We have to pick up as a team where we left off last weekend," Auburn head coach Bobby Reynolds said. "We played our best tennis as an entire unit in our last match (a 4-0 win over No. 26 Arkansas) and that's the mentality we have to bring for South Carolina. They are a very talented team that got on top of us early in our previous meeting, so we need to match their sense of urgency from the first ball.
"This match could be the difference in making postseason play, so we need to leave it all out on the court Tuesday."
The Gamecocks defeated the Tigers 5-2 in Columbia, S.C., in their February regular-season meeting.
In the latest Oracle ITA rankings, Auburn's doubles team of Tad Maclean and Finn Murgett are ranked No. 27, and Tiger sophomore Tyler Stice is No. 28 nationally in singles. South Carolina has four players nationally ranked in singles: Daniel Rodrigues (2), Connor Thomson (25), Raphael Lambling (59) and Toby Samuel (93). The Gamecocks have two ranked doubles teams, Rodrigues and Thomson (20) and Lambling and Phillip Jordan (84).
For live scoring and video of all SEC championship action, go to: https://arkansasrazorbacks.com/sectennistourney/.
