The Texas A&M women’s tennis team enters the final weekend of the regular season on Friday as the Aggies take on 20th-ranked Auburn at the Yarbrough Tennis Center in Auburn, Alabama. First serve is at 6 p.m.
“We have had a great week of practice while preparing for Auburn on Friday,” Aggie head coach Mark Weaver said. “This has been a very important week for us as we are closing out the regular season and basically going straight into the SEC Tournament. Coach Jordan Szabo and I couldn’t be happier with how we have prepared this week, and now it’s time to go out and perform.”
A&M (15-7, 5-6 SEC), which has two top-25 victories this season, is only one game behind the Tigers in the Southeastern Conference standings and is currently in eighth place. The Aggies are aiming to better their seeding in the SEC Tournament and also get back into the win column after suffering road losses at No. 2 Vanderbilt and No. 28 Kentucky last weekend.
Auburn (18-9, 6-5 SEC), which will be celebrating Senior Day, is tied with Kentucky for sixth place after defeating both Missouri and Arkansas on the road last weekend. The Tigers are 11-2 in home matches this season.
Individually, A&M has one player listed in the ITA singles rankings and one pair ranked in doubles. Senior Macarena Olivares is No. 93 in singles with a 25-10 overall mark, including 15-5 in dual matches, all at the No. 2 line. She leads A&M in SEC wins with a 5-4 record. In doubles, seniors Domenica Gonzalez and Eva Paalma are No. 65. The duo is 18-9 overall, including 9-6 in dual matches all at the No. 1 line, as well as 5-4 in SEC matches only.
Auburn has two players ranked in singles: No. 47 Jaeda Daniel, who is 9-3 in SEC matches only and is riding a team-leading four-match winning streak, and No. 109 Alizee Michaud, who is 14-11 overall and is one of three seniors on the team.
A&M leads Auburn, 7-1, in the all-time series which began in 2007, but the series is tied, 1-1, in matches played at Auburn. The Aggies are 4-1 against the Tigers as SEC foes, with the one loss coming at Auburn in 2016. In the most recent meeting, A&M upset then-No. 5 Auburn, 4-1, last year in College Station.
The Aggies close out the regular season at Alabama on Sunday at 1 p.m. The SEC Tournament is April 18-22 in Knoxville, Tennessee.
