OXFORD, Miss. The Ole Miss women’s tennis team hopes to maintain its undefeated home record this season with two key SEC West matches this weekend against No. 16 Alabama and No. 49 Auburn.
Both matches are scheduled to be played at the Palmer/Salloum Tennis Center. In the event of inclement weather, they will be moved inside to the Gillom Sports Center.
Ole Miss comes into the weekend at 4-4 overall and seeking their first conference win after dropping matches to No. 2 Georgia and No. 12 Tennessee last weekend. The Rebels are led by freshman Kristi Boxx, who picked up two huge wins on the opening weekend of conference play, beating the No. 6 ranked and No. 47 ranked players, both at No.1 singles. She improved to 6-2 in dual matches, 3-0 at No. 1.
“This is a huge weekend for the SEC West,” head coach Mark Beyers said. “Alabama is off to a great start. We would love to be able to give them their first loss. We feel at home we have an opportunity to do that. Hopefully we can get a crowd out here to help us. Even though we lost both our matches last weekend, we had some opportunities to win. To their (UGA/UT) credit they came out on top in those situations.”
Alabama (10-0, 2-0) is off to its best start in program history. They defeated Arkansas and LSU last weekend to begin conference play. The Crimson Tide is led by senior Shelley Godwin, this week’s SEC Player of the Week, who owns a 9-0 record, 7-0 at No. 5 singles.
Auburn comes into the weekend at 6-5 overall, 1-1 in the SEC. They defeated LSU before losing to Arkansas, last weekend. The Tigers are led by Fani Chifchieva, who holds a 6-4 overall record, 1-1 in the SEC at No. 1 singles.
Admission to all home matches is free.
