The No. 30 Auburn men's tennis team begins SEC tournament action Thursday morning at 10 a.m. CT facing No. 31 Ole Miss. Auburn is the 7-seed and Ole Miss is seeded 10th in the tournament.
The winner faces No. 9 South Carolina, the 2-seed, Friday at 10 a.m. CT. All tournament matches will be played at Georgia's Dan Magill Tennis Complex in Athens. Action continues through Sunday's championship match.
"We've had a lot of success in the SEC this year. We're playing Ole Miss and we were able to go in there and beat them 6-1 at their place, so when you get to face a team you've already had success against, it gives you extra confidence," Auburn head coach Bobby Reynolds said. "I think this team is ready, not only for that first round, but to make a deep run. They believe in themselves and they believe in this team, so that's a different mindset going into this tournament than maybe it was last year.
"It is nice that we were just at Georgia a few days ago and we are familiar with the courts. As far as getting after it at practices and working on stuff, we've already done that in the months prior to now, so now it's just fine-tuning and getting a good sweat and getting our legs under us, getting a good night's sleep and being ready to battle on Thursday.
"We've got to win the doubles. We've been very successful at one this year – two last time we played them was a battle – and our three has changed since we played them. These next two days, our guys will watch those matches and see where they were successful and where their opponents were successful against us. We'll really have a good sense individually of how we want to play on each court and continue that success. You're going to see a lot of the same matchups we had from the first time around and I think it plays into our favor that we get to play them at a neutral site. Our guys will be ready to go."
Auburn is 18-9 for the spring season and finished 5-7 in SEC play. The Tigers are ranked No. 30 in the latest ITA team ratings and No. 25 in the Tennis Channel/USTA Top 25. No. 31 Ole Miss is 16-11 overall and went 4-8 in SEC play.
In the latest ITA individual rankings, Tyler Stice is 28th in singles and Tad Maclean and Finn Murgett are ranked No. 11 nationally as a doubles tandem, the second-highest ranking of any SEC doubles team. Maclean, with 70 career doubles wins, now ranks ninth all-time among Auburn career leaders in that category, and his 134 combined career wins rank 13th in Auburn history.