BATON ROUGE, La. – Men’s tennis edged out LSU by a 4-3 score in the final match of the regular season on Sunday afternoon at the LSU Tennis Complex in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. With the score tied at three, Auburn redshirt sophomore Nicholas Heng clinched the team victory in a thrilling three-set win at the No. 6 singles position.
Who else? 😏
— Auburn Men's Tennis (@AuburnMTennis) April 13, 2025
Nicholas Heng comes through for the Auburn victory AGAIN 🔥🔥#WarEagle pic.twitter.com/ggw4hb7l4A
“It was a great college tennis match,” Auburn head coach Bobby Reynolds said after the win. “Hats off to LSU, they gave us everything they had and so did we. It’s a nice feeling to come out on the weekend end, but both teams left it all out there. I couldn’t be prouder of (Heng). He had opportunities to close things out in the second set and make things easy but was also down match points in the third set. He’s got a heart of gold and nerves of steel so there was nobody better for it to come down to in the end.
“Did a great job of getting off the court with Billy (Blaydes) and Alex (Frusina). For Hamza (Nasridinov) to make the turn, put his head down in the second and third to win and make it a pretty convincing win allowed our guys at No. 5 and No. 6 to battle it out for the win.”
LSU took the early advantage in the match by claiming the doubles point with victories at the No. 2 and No. 3 doubles positions.
Auburn freshman Alex Frusina earned his second straight set singles win of the weekend to give Auburn its first point in the match. Frusina dominated in his opening set over Andrej Loncarevic 6-1 and continued that momentum by taking the second set 6-2 to tie the team score at one.
Billy Blaydes then recorded a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Julien Penzlin at the No. 3 singles position to give Auburn a 2-1 lead in the match. The win makers the ninth consecutive singles victory for Blaydes and improved his singles record to 23-14 overall and 16-7 in dual matches.
LSU responded by claiming a straight set win of its own on the top singles court to tie the score at two.
LSU’s Sasa Markovic won the opening set over Auburn’s Hamza Nasridinov at the No. 4 singles position, but Nasridinov came back to win the next two sets convincingly and defeat Markovic 4-6, 6-2, 6-2. At the time of Nasridinov’s win, each of the other two remaining singles matches had entered a third set. LSU took the match on court five, as Enzo Kohlmann defeated Joey Phillips 5-7, 7-6 (2), 6-4 to tie the match at three.
After Heng won a tight first set over LSU’s Calin Stirbu, Stirbu won the second set in a tiebreaker to set up a winner-take-all third set to decide the match. Heng prevailed in the back-and-forth third set 7-5 to clinch the team victory and begin a celebration with his teammates on court six.
With the win, Auburn concludes its regular season with an 18-9 overall record and a 7-7 record in conference matches. The Tigers will be the 8-seed in the upcoming SEC Championship at the Carolina Tennis Center in Columbia, South Carolina. With a first-round bye, Auburn will face 9-seed Kentucky in the second round of the championship on Thursday at 1 p.m. CT.
#34 Auburn 4, LSU 3
Singles Results:
- #111 Alessio Vasquez (LSU) def. Will Nolan (AUB) 6-3, 7-5
- #70 Alex Frusina (AUB) def. Andrej Loncarevic (LSU) 6-1, 6-2
- Billy Blaydes (AUB) def. Julien Penzlin (LSU) 6-3, 6-4
- Hamza Nasridinov (AUB) def. Sasa Markovic (LSU) 4-6, 6-2, 6-2
- Enzo Kohlmann (LSU) def. Joey Phillips (AUB) 5-7, 7-6 (7-2), 6-4
- Nicholas Heng (AUB) def. Calin Stirbu (LSU) 7-5, 6-7 (5-7), 7-5
Doubles Results:
- Sasa Markovic/Andrej Loncarevic (LSU) vs. #13 Will Nolan/Billy Blaydes (AUB) 4-3, unfinished
- Alessio Vasquez/Julien Penzlin (LSU) def. Alex Frusina/Joey Phillips (AUB) 6-3
- Calin Stirbu/Enzo Kohlmann (LSU) def. Jake Kennedy/Nicholas Heng (AUB) 6-2
Order of finish: Doubles: 2,3; Singles: 2,3,1,4,5,6