Texas A&M Outlasts No. 1 Georgia in Four-Hour Thriller; Tennessee Men Upset No. 3 Texas; Ousigwe and Nava Claim USTA Pro Circuit Titles; USA BJK Cup Team Advances to September Finals

The final day of the SEC regular season delivered the excitement, with the second-ranked Texas A&M women fighting back to beat No. 1 Georgia 4-3 in College Station, while the 17th-ranked Tennessee men defeated No. 3 Texas 4-2 in Knoxville.

It took some time for the Georgia-Texas A&M match to become interesting, with the doubles point going quickly to the Bulldogs with wins at lines 1 and 2, and the Aggies getting a routine win at line 3. 

Georgia took three first sets in singles, giving them a path, but it wasn't long before that path was blocked. Freshman Lexington Reed brought the Aggies even with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Sofia Rojas at line 6, before Georgia went out in front again with Guillermina Grant's 6-2, 6-3 victory over Daria Smetannikov at line 5.

Mia Kupres forced the third set the Aggies needed after Mell Reasco had taken the opening set in a tiebreaker at line 3. Texas A&M's Nicole Khirin had sent her match with Anastasiia Lopata to a third set at line 2, while Aysegul Mert had done the same in her contest with Lucciana Perez at line 4. 

The match at line 1, between Dasha Vidmanova and Mary Stoiana, the top two players in the country, was as close as expected, with Stoiana taking the first in a tiebreaker.

Lopata gave Georgia a 3-1 lead with a 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 win over Khirin, a lead the Bulldogs held for quite a while, but Stoiana closed out Vidmanova 7-6(2), 7-6(5) and Kupres made it 3-all with a 6-7(4), 6-1, 6-3 win over Reasco.

That meant the match would be decided at line 4, with Perez going up a break 3-2 in the third set when all the attention turned to that court.  She held from 0-40 down for 4-2, then broke Mert on a deciding point to take a 5-2 lead and serve for the match.

Up 5-2, 40-0, Perez not only didn't convert any of those four match points, she lost 11 straight points and soon it was 5-all. Mert was broken to give Perez a third chance to serve out the match, but she could not, so after four hours of play, a tiebreaker would decide it.  Perez kept herself in front from 3-2 on, delivering the SEC title with a 7-6(4), 4-6, 7-6(4) win.

With their fourth straight SEC title(co-champions with Georgia last year), Texas A&M is also projected to take over No. 1 in the coming week's rankings, and the Aggies have extended their home winning streak to 68 matches.

For more on today's match, see this article from 12thman.com

In Knoxville, Texas was playing without three starters: Sebastian Gorzny, Oliver Ojakaar and Lucas Brown. While the Longhorns were able to beat Georgia 4-2 without those three Friday, Tennessee took the doubles point and got wins from Shunsuke Mitsui at line 2, Jan Kobierski at line 5 and Ian Cruz at line 6 to pull off the win, handing Texas its first conference loss. The Longhorns had already clinched the outright SEC title before this weekend's matches.

For more on the win for Tennessee, which provides a significant boost to its hosting hopes for the first two rounds of the NCAAs, see this article from utsports.com.

The two USTA Pro Circuit tournaments in Florida this week concluded with two American champions, with Whitney Osuigwe winning the W35 in Boca Raton  and Emilio Nava claiming his third straight ATP Challenger 75 title in Sarasota.

Osuigwe, the No. 2 seed, defeated unseeded 18-year-old Akasha Urhobo 6-4, 6-3 to win her second title of 2025, in what was already her fourth final. The 2018 USTA National 18s champion and 2017 ITF World Junior champion is 22-7 this year and at her highest ranking since 2021.

Nava continued his remarkable run over the past month, with the No. 5 seed defeating No. 7 seed Liam Draxl(Kentucky) of Canada 6-2, 7-6(2) in today's final. Nava, who has now won 15 straight matches, hasn't lost a set in his last 12 matches. Trailing 3-0 with Draxl serving in the second set, Nava kept that streak intact by winning his fourth tiebreaker in that 12-match stretch.

Now up to 140 in the ATP rankings, Nava is scheduled to compete in the ATP Challenger 75 in Tallahassee this coming week, where he is the No. 6 seed. Nava will take the lead in the USTA's Roland Garros Wild Card Challenge with these 75 points, surpassing Colton Smith(Arizona), who has 68 from his quarterfinal run at the ATP 250 in Houston. There are three weeks remaining in that wild card race.

The United States' Billie Jean King Cup team had several late withdrawals prior to this weekend's group play in Slovakia, with Jessica Pegula, Danielle Collins and McCartney Kessler bowing out. That left captain Lindsay Davenport scrambling for players, but such is the depth of American women's tennis that it was no problem, with Hailey Baptiste and Bernarda Pera both winning their two singles matches against Denmark and Slovakia to send the USA to the final eight in China in September.

From the USTA release:

A steady performance from Hailey Baptiste and a resilient comeback from Bernarda Pera lifted the U.S. Billie Jean King Cup Team through to the 2025 Finals with a 2-1 victory over Slovakia to win Qualifying Group C in Bratislava on Sunday.

Baptiste and Pera, each making their first Billie Jean King Cup apperances, combined to go 4-0 in singles over the weekend to clinch victories over both Denmark and the host Slovakians. After Baptiste gave the Americans a 1-0 lead in Sunday's decisive tie, Pera rallied from 0-4 down in the second set against world No. 37 Rebecca Sramkova to clinch the Finals berth for the U.S.

The U.S. team will join Italy, China, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Spain, Great Britain and Japan in the eight-nation Finals played September 16-21 in Shenzhen, China.

For more on this weekend's qualification see this article at usta.com.