Men

Texas A&M and Mississippi State remain atop the conference standings with 4-0 records but both will get tested this weekend. Texas A&M visits #25 Tennessee on Friday and then must travel home to host #42 Alabama on Sunday. Alabama should not pose much of a threat to the #6 Aggies, but Tennessee could put up a fight if they are on their game. I would expect that the Aggies will have Patrick Kypson back after he played in the qualifying of the Miami Open this week, an ATP 1000 event, where he upset American Tim Smyczek in the first round but lost his final qualifying match to Cameron Norrie. The match with Norrie who played for TCU last year was ironic as Kypsons Texas A&M teammates played TCU the later that night falling to the same fate Kypson did.

The 13^th ranked Mississippi State Bulldogs will get two top 25 matchups at home this week as they face #19 Vanderbilt Friday and #21 Kentucky Sunday. MSUs top dog Nuno Borges has only lost one collegiate match this year and that was at All-Americans in the fall. He will put his undefeated dual match record on the line in potential matches with Vandys Cameron Klinger and Kentuckys Ryotaro Matsumura. Matsumura has gone 11-1 in the dual match season so far with his last loss prior to that coming at the hands of Borges in the Fall National Championships 6-1, 6-3.

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I’d like to introduce our newest College Tennis Today contributor, Chris Halioris, who will be breaking down everything in the SEC. Chris has a nephew that is currently playing in the SEC and he is a big college tennis fan in general. Chris just debuted a new site, College Tennis Ranks, which projects the ITA team rankings for the next week plus it has a ton of great features which help you understand how the rankings are tabulated. I highly recommend bookmarking his site plus I’ll be adding it in under my rankings tab to make it easy to find. Now it’s time for Chris’s recap of the past week:

Two big matches and one big surprise this week for the men. Florida was involved in both of the big matches as they took on TCU at home and Vanderbilt on the road. The Gators came up on the short end against TCU taking a tough 4-3 loss at the Ring but rebounded for an easy 4-0 sweep at home against Kentucky on Friday and then played the marquee matchup Sunday at Vandy which I happened to travel to. Florida looked to be rolling early as they took the doubles point and 4 first sets and looked as though they were about to close the match out after Perez and Perez-Blanco made it 3-1 and Vale was in control. Then all of a sudden Vale double faults on a deuce match point at 5-4 in the second and the momentum began to swing. Billy Rowe took the set, Baker Newman took the second set from Oliver Crawford and Johannes Ingildsen lost his match to make it 3-2 Gators. The next thing you know Vandy is up a break on both remaining courts and Florida looks to be in deep trouble. Billy Rowe capped off a very energetic win over Vale on court 4 and now all eyes were on court 3 where Oliver Crawford managed to break back to get on serve just as Vale lost. From 4-4 Crawford held and then Baker Newman dug out of a 15-40 hole at 4-5 to get to deuce but lost a very tough break point to give the Gators the match 4-3.

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