‘Auburn means a lot to me’: Tigers enter Sweet Sixteen focused on leaving a legacy — for themselves, and for the school
When Angella Okutoyi first got to Auburn, she said there weren’t program legends to live up to or look up to. “I really want to do good for the school. ... I just feel like we need a legacy.”
When Angella Okutoyi first stepped foot on the Auburn campus four years ago — fresh off the plane from Nairobi, Kenya — there was no legend to live up to.
There’s no statue, like a Charles Barkley, at the entrance of the Yarbrough Tennis Center. There are no icons of old in the program like Bo Jackson, or modern champions to compare them to like Cam Newton. Auburn women’s tennis this weekend hosts a Super Regional in the NCAA Tournament for just the first time ever, and seeks its first win ever at Super Regionals — and to earn its first appearance ever at the NCAA Championship and the Elite Eight round.
While plenty of important work from plenty of important people started the program and kept it alive to make this year’s run possible, there’s been no transcendent champion, no one that has proved something more is possible, no program legend.
So the Tigers in the next few weeks will try to become those legends themselves.
“I just feel like we need a legacy, especially in tennis, at Auburn, because I feel like we never had people to look up to, especially from when I came here,” Okutoyi said, standing on the courts at Yarbrough after Auburn’s round of 32 win over Miami last weekend. “I didn’t have someone to look up to from Auburn, like, ‘Oh they did this and that.’ So it would mean a lot if we left a legacy and if people coming after us would see that and want to do more. It would be like a motivation for them.”
Auburn hosts Duke at 5 p.m. Friday, with the winner being among the eight teams headed to Athens to crown the national champion May 14-17. Friday marks a rematch between the same teams in the Super Regional round last year: Then, Auburn was the No. 9 seed and lost having to play at eighth-seeded Duke. This time around, the Tigers have the home-court advantage, with Duke being seeded 15th in the NCAA Tournament, and Auburn at the end of a dream season seeded No. 2 overall.
Auburn is a remarkable 34-3 on the year, co-owners of the SEC’s regular-season championship title and outright winners of the SEC Tournament championship. With that in mind, Auburn head coach Jordan Szabo hopes his Tigers play even looser in the late stages of the NCAA Tournament — not tighter, or under pressure: