No. 20 State Netmen To Open SEC Tourney Vs. Arkansas Thursday
Sixth-seeded State enters the tournament 11-8 overall and 6-5 in theSEC. Arkansas, seeded 11th, is 5-15, 2-9. The Bulldogs finished in a tie forfourth overall in the league this season, second in the Western Division.The Hogs were 11th overall and fifth in the West.
MSU has dropped five of its last six matches, but all five losses havecome to top 25 teams, three of them in the top 15. Arkansas has fallen infour of its last five, including its 5-2 loss to the Bulldogs inFayetteville on April 1. With that win, State now owns a 17-5 series lead onUA. The teams have met only once before in the SEC Championship, with MSUtaking a 4-0 win in the first round of the 2001 event in Lexington, Ky.
State is led by true freshman Pierre Mouillon, who posted the team'sbest record in SEC play this season at 9-2. He is 13-4 overall in dualmatches. Junior Florent Girod owns the team's best dual mark at 14-3. He was8-3 in conference affairs.
Arkansas has two players ranked in the top 100 nationally at present inRohan Gajjar (55th) and Matt Roberts (97th). Gajjar and Adrians Zguns are57th in the country in doubles.
"I said it when we went to Fayetteville and I will say it again -Arkansas is a dangerous, dangerous team," MSU head coach Sylvain Guichardsaid. "They have lost some very close matches to some extremely good teamsthis year, most of them on the road. We cannot let our guard down againstthem at all."
The winner of Thursday's contest will advance to meet third-seeded hostGeorgia on Friday, also in a 3 p.m. start. The Athens-based Bulldogs arecurrently ranked ninth nationally.
MSU is 16-14, all-time in the SEC Championship and has reached at leastthe quarterfinals in 12 of the 15 tournaments since the team format wasadopted in 1990.
Live scoring of this weekend's tournament will be available on UGA'sofficial athletic site, georgiadogs.com.