AUBURN, Ala. \u2013 No. 4 Auburn women\u2019s tennis will face two top-10 opponents on the road this week in the state of Texas. The Tigers will play second-ranked Texas A&M on Thursday at 5 p.m. CT at the Mitchell Tennis Center in College Station and No. 6 Texas at the Texas Tennis Center in Austin on Saturday at noon CT.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a tough environment both matches, and they\u2019re both good teams like us,\u201d Auburn head coach Jordan Szabo<\/a> said. \u201cThey\u2019re like lots of other teams that we\u2019ve played all year long and been successful against, so not much will change with our preparation. We\u2019re excited to go out there and compete. We\u2019ve played really good teams on the road, and we\u2019ve been absolute road warriors this year, and that\u2019s what we need to do again. All it will take is our best, and if we give it our best, I really like where our chances will be.\u201d<\/p>\n Auburn bounced back from its loss to top-ranked Georgia on March 21 with two dominant SEC victories at home against Mississippi State and Alabama on Thursday and Saturday. The Tigers reached a program-high for wins in a season on Saturday and are currently 26-2 overall. Auburn and Texas A&M are tied for the top spot in the SEC standings at 10-1.<\/p>\n Auburn moved to No. 4 in the latest ITA National Team Rankings released Tuesday and remained in the top spot in the UTR Sports College Team Rankings released Wednesday. In the ITA Doubles Rankings, DJ Bennett<\/a> and Ava Esposito<\/a> moved up six spots to No. 10 nationally with a 10-1 dual match record this season.<\/p>\n Texas A&M, which won the NCAA title in 2024, is 18-3 overall this season and 9-1 in home matches. The Aggies have won each of their last five matches, including a road win over No. 11 LSU on Sunday. The team has earned six ranked wins this season, and its only conference loss came at home against No. 1 Georgia on March 12.<\/p>\n Texas A&M has four singles players ranked by the ITA, including No. 2 Lucciana Perez, who is a perfect 19-0 this season. Last season, Texas A&M defeated Auburn 4-3 twice \u2014 once during the regular season in Auburn and once in the semifinals of the SEC Championship.<\/p>\n Texas holds a 14-4 overall record and a 9-2 mark in SEC play. The Longhorns lost at home to No. 18 Tennessee on March 22 but rebounded last weekend with road wins over No. 10 LSU and Ole Miss. Texas sophomore Carmen Herea is ranked No. 1 in singles by the ITA and is 12-4 in dual matches this season. In 2025, Auburn defeated then-No. 9 Texas 4-3 at the Yarbrough Tennis Center. The match was clinched by Alice Battesti<\/a> in a three-set win over Salma Drugdova.<\/p>\n Live video and live scoring of Thursday\u2019s match in College Station will be available at 12thMan.com, while coverage of Saturday\u2019s match in Austin will be available at TexasLonghorns.com.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Auburn in the rankings (ITA)<\/p>\n Singles:<\/p>\n 38 \u2013 DJ Bennett<\/a><\/p>\n 44 \u2013 Ashton Bowers<\/a><\/p>\n 55 \u2013 Ava Esposito<\/a><\/p>\n 69 \u2013 Angella Okutoyi<\/a><\/p>\n 80 \u2013 Ekaterina Khairutdinova<\/a><\/p>\n Doubles:<\/p>\n 10 \u2013 Ava Esposito<\/a>\/DJ Bennett<\/a><\/p>\n 21 \u2013 Angella Okutoyi<\/a>\/Merna Refaat<\/a><\/p>\n 47 \u2013 Angella Okutoyi<\/a>\/Ava Esposito<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUBURN, Ala. \u2013 No. 4 Auburn women\u2019s tennis will face two top-10 opponents on the road this week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-230751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}