Women's Tennis | 3/26/2015 11:12:00 AM
ABILENE - The Abilene Christian women's tennis is home Friday for the first time in three weeks to play host to Southland Conference rival Southeastern Louisiana on the outdoor courts of the Eager Tennis Pavilion.
Match time is 11:44 a.m. and the forecast calls for sunny skies and a high of 78 degrees.
The Wildcats (6-2, 2-2 Southland) defeated the Lions 5-2 last season in Hammond, La., and will need to beat them again to break their current two-game losing streak and get back over the .500 mark in conference play. Southeastern, meanwhile, is 8-3 overall and 3-2 vs. the league after losing 5-2 earlier this week to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, which snapped a three-game winning streak.
ACU enters this weekend coming off back-to-back conference road losses at Northwestern State and Stephen F. Austin. The first-place Lady Demons defeated the Wildcats, 5-2, while the unbeaten-in-conference Ladyjacks edged ACU, 4-3.
The loss at Northwestern State snapped several season-long winning streaks for the Wildcats, including a six-match team winning streak, an 11-0 start by the doubles team of
Brittney Reed and
Kaysie Hermsdorf as well as Hermsdorf's individual eight-match singles winning streak.
However, a couple of winning streaks were extended. Freshman
Whitney Williams won both of her matches at No. 5 to lift her conference singles mark to 3-1, while junior
Nada Marjanovic improved to 7-0 following a pair of victories at No. 6. And in doubles, the rookie duo of
Carli Knezevich and
Lucile Pothier raised their record to 6-2 after winning their third-consecutive match together.
The Lions have been outstanding in singles play this spring and enter tomorrow's match with a cumulative record of 45-18 (.714). They are led by Renee Villarreal who is 11-0 at the No. 1 singles position and 5-2 when competing at No. 1 doubles.
In other women's tennis news, head coach
Hutton Jones announced earlier this week that his team will be playing Texas - currently ranked No. 32 by the ITA - for the first time in his 19 years as a head coach on April 7 in Austin at 3:30 p.m. Additionally, the Wildcats' match time next Wednesday, April 1 at No. 15 Texas A&M was moved to a 2 p.m. start.
