BEAUMONT, Texas – At the beginning of the 2016 men's tennis season many believed that the Southland Conference title would come down between Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Lamar University. Those prognosticators nailed it as the two teams will step on the court Wednesday at the Thompson Family Tennis Center in Beaumont, Texas to decide who will be crowned Southland Champions.
The battle shapes as two teams who match up well on paper, but arrive at the match from two very different ends of the spectrum. The league's dominant power having won the last six Southland titles, and eight of the last nine, the Islanders are 15-6 (.714) overall and a perfect 4-0 mark in Southland Conference play. A&M-Corpus Christi has won its last five matches, dating back to a two-point loss to Southern Miss, 4-2, more than a month ago.
The Cardinals are the team looking bump A&M-Corpus Christi from its perch. LU heads into its senior day showdown riding a wave of momentum. Big Red jumped to 54th in the latest ITATennis.com poll – the program's highest ranking under head coach
Scott Shankles – and is in the midst of a season-long six-match win streak, the program's longest since the 2004-05 season. In addition to LU being ranked as a team, the duo of junior
Michael Feucht and
Benny Schweizer are ranked 64
th nationally in doubles competition.
The Cardinals step on the court Wednesday looking to do something that hasn't been accomplished in 40 years. The 2016 version of the Cardinals are looking for the program's first Southland Conference regular-season title since 1976. The championship in 1976 ended a run of four straight for the Red and White. If LU can pick up the victory Wednesday it would be the program's sixth Southland title in school history, and 18
th overall (12 Lone Star Conference titles).
A victory over the Islanders would also give LU the No. 1 seed in the Southland Conference Championships which will begin Saturday, April 23 in Nacogdoches, Texas. All matches will be played at the Schlief Tennis Complex on the Stephen F. Austin campus.
-LU CARDINALS-
