Jan. 29, 2009
COLLEGE STATION - The second-ranked Texas A&M equestrian team will begin its spring schedule by visiting 2007 national champion South Carolina on Saturday at 10 a.m. Eastern.
The Aggies (5-1) and seventh-ranked Gamecocks (2-4) will face each other at One Wood Farm in Blythewood, S.C. This will be A&M's first overall head-to-head match-up with South Carolina.
A&M opened its season on a roll by breaking in its new facility, the Brazos County Expo Complex, with a strong 15-5 victory over No. 8 Fresno State. The Aggies later delivered difficult-to-come-by road wins over Big 12 rivals Kansas State and Oklahoma State, 10-9 and 14-11, respectively. A&M also defeated the reigning western national champion TCU Horned Frogs to close out its home fall schedule. The Aggies' only hiccup has been a 15-5 defeat at No. 4 Baylor to end the fall campaign.
South Carolina, the 2005 and 2007 overall national champions, has stumbled out of the gate somewhat compared with their recent championship seasons but did open its spring schedule with a tiebreaker win at Tennessee-Martin last Saturday. The Gamecocks opened their 2008-09 campaign with an impressive 13-4 home win over Kansas State but proceeded to lose four straight shows: at home to No. 1 Auburn (10-6), then on the road to Baylor (15-5), TCU (12-7) and Georgia (13-7). All of South Carolina's losses have come to teams ranked in the top six in the country.
Though the two schools have never met in an overall show, both the hunter seat and western halves have faced the Gamecocks before separately. The western squad defeated South Carolina, 6-2, to win their discipline's national team championship in 2007. The two met up again at nationals in 2008 with the Aggies earning another 6-2 win to grab fifth place in the national championship western tournament. The Gamecocks hold a 1-0 advantage over the A&M hunter seat group, having won a 396-336 decision under the old scoring system at the Big Eight Tournament in Georgia on Oct. 8, 2005.