Auburn University will face Denver at the ITA Kickoff Weekend

The Auburn University women’s tennis team, ranked No.14, is preparing to play to qualify for the 2024 ITA Indoor National Team Championships. The Tigers will take to the court in Durham, North Carolina, during the ITA Kickoff Weekend. The Auburn ladies’ first game will be against Denver, today, and the second game will be against either Duke or Princeton, tomorrow Saturday, January 27, 2024.

The weekend begins Friday with Duke and Princeton at 2 p.m. CT before the Tigers’ game against Denver scheduled for 5:30 p.m. CT. The winners of each respective match will face each other in Saturday’s match at 3pm. CT.  Live video and live scores from each game will be available online at goduke.com throughout the weekend.

Last season, Auburn hosted the ITA Kickoff Weekend and defeated both UCSB and UCF to qualify for the Seattle Indoor Championships.

Staying in that top 1️⃣5️⃣#WarEagle pic.twitter.com/Tznh8l5LZI

— Auburn Women’s Tennis (@AuburnWTennis) January 24, 2024

Denver will enter the weekend with a 2-0 record. No.15 Duke University will enter with a 4-0 record and Princeton with a 1-0 record. The Blue Devils have four ranked singles players, including No. 52 Katie Codd, while Princeton has a ranked doubles team and a ranked singles player, No. 93 Madeleine Jessup.
 
Selin Ovunc, who is ranked 122nd nationally in singles, was the star of the Tigers’ final match against North Carolina, winning in straight sets against No. 41 Abbey Forbes in Chapel Hill on Saturday. Ovunc enters the weekend with a record of 6-4 in singles and 10-3 in doubles this season.

What happened last weekend

Auburn fell in its first doubleheader of the season 6-1 to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, last Saturday. The win improves North Carolina’s record to 3-0 and the loss drops Auburn to 0-1.

In doubles, Ariana Arsenault and Angella Okutoyi started strong on the first court against Fiona Crawley and Carson Tanguilig. The Auburn duo led four games to two at one point in the match and were leading five games to four when the game ended, as North Carolina won on Court 2 and 3 to take the doubles point. 

The Tigers got off to a slow start in singles play, winning the opening set. No. 122 Selin Ovunc won the first set of her court five match convincingly over 41st-ranked Abbey Forbes 6-3. The Tar Heels then clinched the match by finishing with consecutive victories on courts three, one and six to take a 4-0 lead.

Ovunc capped off her surprise 6-3, 7-5 win over Forbes to give Auburn its first point of the match and make the score 4-1. After a difficult first set on court four, Okutoyi fought back to force her second set into a tie-break but ultimately fell to Tanguilig. The nation’s seventh-ranked singles player, 6-2, 7-6 (5).

With the second set tied at five games apiece, Arseneault and No. 5 Reese Brantmeier exchanged games to force the tie-break. Arseneault won the tiebreaker 7-5, but lost the tight match 4-6, 7-6 (5), 8-10.