"Friday's matchup with South Carolina is an opportunity for our team to compete with the benefit of some recent tough matches,” A&M head coach Howard Joffe said. “The Gamecocks have quickly become one of the better teams in our league, and we will need to perform well to be successful."
The Aggies are 3-3 overall, including 1-1 in Southeastern Conference matches after opening league play with a 7-0 victory at Tennessee and falling at No. 2 Georgia, 5-2, last weekend.
South Carolina, which catapulted from No. 42 to No. 26 in this week's Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) national team rankings, is 8-3 overall, 1-1 in SEC play after upsetting 30th-ranked Auburn, 4-1, and suffering a hard-fought 4-2 setback against defending SEC champion and ninth-ranked Alabama last weekend.
A&M is 2-0 in SEC matchups against the Gamecocks, but South Carolina owns a 7-3 lead in the all-time series. Last year, A&M defeated the then-42nd-ranked Gamecocks, 5-2, in Columbia, S.C. Prior to SEC play, the teams had not met since South Carolina defeated then-No. 28 A&M, 6-0, on March 16, 1995, marking the Gamecocks' sixth consecutive victory against the Aggies.
Sophomore Rachel Pierson, a transfer from the University of Virginia, leads the Aggies in singles victories with a 14-7 mark and is tied for the team lead in doubles wins with a 12-7 record. She also is the Aggies' highest ranked player in both categories, as her No. 40 singles ranking tops an A&M contingent of five players listed in this week's ITA rankings. She is No. 35 in doubles with Aggie lone freshman Eva Paalma.
Sophomores Saska Gavrilovska and Rutuja Bhosale are Nos. 54 and 59, respectively, in singles, and juniors Stefania Hristov and Ines Deheza are ranked 113th and 117th, respectively.
Deheza has had the hot hand as of late, winning her last four singles matches and improving to 4-0 at the No. 4 line. In doubles, she and Hristov teamed together for the first time last weekend and went 2-0 at the No. 2 line, drubbing their Tennessee foe, 8-0, and then upsetting 16th-ranked Silvia Garcia and Kennedy Shaffer of Georgia, 8-7, after winning a marathon tiebreaker, 13-11. The win clinched the doubles point for the Aggies, and Deheza improved to 12-3 overall in doubles.
South Carolina has two players ranked in singles: No. 121 Elixane Lechemia and No. 124 Caroline Dailey. Dailey also is No. 58 in doubles with Hadley Berg.
Gamecocks sophomore Brigit Folland is the reigning SEC Player of the Week and is 2-0 in SEC singles matches at the No. 3 line.
The Aggies close out a two-match homestand on Sunday as they play host to No. 2 Florida at 11 a.m. at the Mitchell Tennis Center. Florida has won or tied for 10 SEC regular-season championships since 2000, including four of the last five season titles. A&M, however, has posted two upsets against the formidable Gators in each of the last two years: a 4-3 victory against then-No. 4 Florida in the first SEC meeting in 2013 at the Mitchell Tennis Center, as well as another 4-3 victory against the fourth-ranked Gators in the quarterfinals of the 2014 SEC Tournament in Columbia, Mo.
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.