COLLEGE STATION, Texas – The 10th-ranked Texas A&M women’s tennis team heads to Waco on Wednesday to battle former Big 12 Conference foe and 14th-ranked Baylor. First serve of the top-15 showdown is slated for 5 p.m. at the Hawkins Indoor Tennis Center.
“We are definitely looking forward to the challenge of playing Baylor,” Aggie first-year head coach Mark Weaver said. “We have had so many close matches in recent years, so we are planning on nothing less than another battle. Baylor has been one of the premier programs for the last 10 years or more, and they always come prepared to play. The match is scheduled to be played indoors, which will give our group of ladies some much needed experience as we will soon be competing at the national indoors.”
Texas A&M qualified for the ITA National Team Indoor Championships, to be held Feb. 5-8, in Madison, Wis., after going 2-0 last weekend at the ITA Kick-Off Weekend. Weaver and the Aggies made their debut by shutting out No. 73 South Alabama, 4-0, and then winning the last two singles matches standing for a come-from-behind 4-3 victory against No. 37 Wichita State in the championship match.
Junior Rutuja Bhosale and sophomore Eva Paalma each went 2-0 in singles at the No. 3 and 4 lines, respectively, with Paalma recording the clinching win in both matches. Junior All-American Saska Gavrilovska leads the Aggies with an overall 9-3 singles record and is A&M’s highest nationally ranked player at No. 53. Junior Rachel Pierson is No. 58, and Bhosale is No. 106.
Baylor is 3-0 after opening the season Jan. 9 with a 4-3 victory at Hawaii and most recently sweeping a doubleheader in its home season opener on Jan. 14 by defeating McNeese State, 4-3, and UT-Rio Grande Valley, 4-1.
Baylor, the three-time defending Big 12 Conference regular-season champion and the two-time defending conference tournament champion, returns five letterwinners from last year’s team that went 28-7, advanced to the NCAA quarterfinals and finished with a No. 8 final ranking. The doubles team of senior Kiah Generette and junior Blair Shankle is ranked 12th in the nation.
A&M has won the last seven matches against the Bears and owns a 27-20 lead in the all-time series, which began in 1980. The Aggies are 12-9 against the Bears in matches played at Baylor.
The teams met twice last year with 30th-ranked A&M pulling away from a 2-2 tie to upset the sixth-ranked Bears, 4-2, in College Station on March 19, and Bhosale posting a come-from-behind 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 victory over Generette in the last match standing to give then-10th-ranked A&M a grueling 4-3 win over No. 7 Baylor at the Hawkins Indoor Tennis Center on April 8.
Baylor’s most recent victory against A&M was on April 5, 2012, in Waco, where the 12th-ranked Bears extended their win streak to 13 against the Aggies and ended A&M’s then record-setting overall 13-match win streak with a 4-2 victory in what would be the final regular-season match-up as Big 12 foes. A&M avenged the loss and began its current win streak against the Bears with a 5-2 win in the semifinals of the Big 12 Tournament, marking the final time the teams would meet as conference opponents.
Live scoring of Wednesday’s A&M-Baylor match will be available here. Also live video will be available atbaylorbears.com.
A&M plays at No. 5 North Carolina on Sunday, Jan. 31, in the Aggies’ final tune-up before heading to the national indoor tournament.
Visit 12thMan.com for more information on Texas A&M women’s tennis. Aggie fans also can keep up to date with the A&M women’s tennis team on Twitter by following @AggieWTEN or on Facebook at Facebook.com/AggieWomensTennis.