Owls and Ragin’ Cajuns Hit the Courts on Friday Afternoon

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In Brief: Rice returns home for the first of three dual matches by hosting Louisiana at 2 p.m. on Friday.

Live Scoring and Video: Live video and match scoring is available for all matches at the George R. Brown Tennis Center.

Louisiana: The Ragin' Cajuns are 7-1 on the season and are coming off a 5-2 road win over 2019 Southland Conference champion Texas A&M Corpus Christi last Saturday. Their lone loss was a 5-2 decision at Florida State on January 11. Rice leads the series 10-2, including a 3-1 lead in games at GRBTC. The Owls took a 4-3 decision last year while the Cajuns picked up a 4-2 win on the Owls' home court in 2018.

Owls Notables:

Rice is 1-0 at home and 0-2 on the road in 2020.
2019 C-USA Player of the Year Sumit Sarkar is unbeaten in his last seven dual singles matches dating back to 2019
Rice is 1-2 so far this year in the doubles point (1-0 when winning the point).
The Owls are 0-3 so far in singles tiebreakers, 1-0 in supersets; 1-0 in doubles tiebreaks.
Clinch points: Jacob Eskeland 1.

Efe Ustundag: "We knew we were facing two tough indoor teams last weekend (Dartmouth and Harvard) and they played a very high level of tennis and really hit us in the gut. We had very few opportunities to make things interesting and were not able to capitalize on the few breaks we had. Barring any kind of injuries, those are two NCAA teams again this year. We knew it was going to be a strong early test and we saw some things we liked and things where we needed to get better. Now we have a chance to see how we respond against a team (Louisiana) that has always been a hard-fought match for us. They came here and beat us two years ago and last year we had to come back from losing the doubles point, so our guys know they have to be ready for another fight."

George R. Brown Tennis Center: Rice has posted a 54-17 regular season record at GRBTC (6-5 vs. ranked teams) since opening for the 2015 dual season. The Owls have also posted a 3-1 postseason mark while hosting a pair of Conference USA championships, including a 3-0 mark while winning the 2016 title.

The Schedule Ahead: The Owls are scheduled to face three of the top 10 teams in the latest Oracle/ITA National Top 25 (@#7 Texas A&M on 2/21; #11 TCU at GRBTC on 3/11 and @#4 Texas on 3/8). The schedule features seven other teams who were ranked in the final 2019 collegiate rankings, including home matches with LSU (#48) and Middle Tennessee (#68) and also will see the Owls take on six Conference USA schools (Charlotte, FAU, MTSU, Southern Miss, UAB and UTSA) in the regular season for the first time since Rice joined the conference in 2005.

Next Up: Rice hosts Texas A&M Corpus Christi at 2 p.m. Tuesday and wraps up the homestand February 16 by hosting Abilene Christian at noon.
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