April 3, 2014
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The 44th-ranked South Carolina women’s tennis team will look to extend its two-match winning streak in Mississippi this week when it faces No. 24 Ole Miss on Friday at 4 p.m. ET in Oxford and No. 75 Mississippi State at 5:30 p.m. ET on Saturday in Starkville.
South Carolina (12-8, 3-6 SEC) scored a pair of wins against higher ranked opponents last week, defeating then-No. 49 LSU by a 4-1 score and then-No. 45 Arkansas 4-0. The two wins helped improve Carolina’s ranking this week by 21 spots. Elixane Lechemia, who earned her first career national singles ranking last week at 117th, posted a pair of wins at No. 1 doubles with Dominika Kanakova and clinched the Gamecocks’ triumph over Arkansas. She is tied with Caroline Dailey and Meghan Blevins for the team lead in singles victories this season with 17. She also leads the team in individual doubles wins with 17. Blevins kept up her winning ways in both matches as well, posting two straight-set wins to improve to 13-4 in dual matches, which leads the team. She is a stellar 12-1 at No. 4 singles this spring and has one of the team’s best records in doubles at 16-8.
Ole Miss (11-5, 5-4 SEC) cracked the top 25 this week, moving up two spots from a week ago. The Rebels defeated Mississippi State 4-2 to win their 25th in a row against the Bulldogs. After dropping a close doubles point, the Rebels picked up straight-set singles wins at positions three through six. It marked the team’s fourth straight SEC win and fifth win overall in their last six matches. Erin Stephens got the party started by winning her sixth in a row to put the Rebels on the board against State. Mai El Kamash has won seven straight and is 11-3 on the season at No. 4 singles. Iris Verboven clinched the win over MSU and improved to 8-0 at No. 6 singles. She has now clinched two of the last three SEC wins for the Rebels.
Mississippi State (9-10, 1-8 SEC) took the doubles point from Ole Miss with wins on courts one and three, but 66th-ranked Georgiana Patrasc earned the only singles point for the Bulldogs, moving to 6-1 in the SEC and 13-3 in dual match play. The Bulldogs’ one win in conference play this season came at the expense of No. 45 Tennessee in a 4-3 final. MSU has been a tough out at home, as the Bulldogs suffered a 4-3 loss to No. 28 Kentucky and a 4-2 setback to No. 8 Vanderbilt a few weeks ago. State’s win over Tennessee also came in Starkville. The Bulldogs will host seventh-ranked Florida on Friday before facing the Gamecocks.
South Carolina and Ole Miss have split their 30 all-time contests against each other right down the middle. The Rebels owned the advantage from 1986 to 2000 with an 11-2 mark, but 13 of the past 17 contests have favored South Carolina. In those 13 victories, the Gamecocks pulled out the match by only a 4-3 margin seven times. Carolina gave a dominant performance over the Rebels last year in Columbia en route to a 4-0 victory, but less than two weeks afterward, the Gamecocks lost a 4-3 decision to Ole Miss in Starkville in the second round of the SEC Tournament.
The Gamecocks own a near-perfect record in the all-time series with the Bulldogs. South Carolina is 24-1 with all 24 wins coming consecutively. Carolina has also never lost a match to MSU as a member of the Southeastern Conference. Last season, South Carolina survived a scare from Mississippi State in Columbia. With the match tied 3-all, Lechemia pulled off a three-set come-from-behind victory over Alexandra Perper at No. 2 singles, winning 4-6, 7-6 (7-5), 7-5.
The Gamecocks return home next week for their final two home matches of the regular season when they host Kentucky on April 11 at 5 p.m. and Vanderbilt on April 13 at 1:30 p.m.
