STARKVILLE – Mississippi State men’s tennis closed out its four-match homestand with a pair of wins during a doubleheader on Sunday.
The Bulldogs rallied back to beat a solid Middle Tennessee State squad 5-2 in the opener inside the Rula Tennis Pavilion and then finished the day off with a 6-1 victory over Tennessee State to improve to 4-0.
“Today is a great example to them for what we can do as a team,” said MSU head coach Matt Roberts. “It was just awesome for them to go through that. We got a little more swagger to our group going through that (Middle Tennessee) match today because that was our first tough test.”
MSU dropped the doubles point to the Blue Raiders (2-1) but were able to get back on track by claiming the first three singles matches. Benito Sanchez Martinez rallied for a 6-4, 6-2 straight-set victory over Marcel Kamrowski followed by Gregor Ramskogler’s 6-0, 2-6, 6-2 victory against Pavel Motl.
After winning his first set 6-4, Carles Hernandez provided the Bulldogs with even more momentum by outlasting 60th-ranked Oskar Brostrom Poulsen in a second-set tiebreaker 7-6(7) for his second ranked singles win of the year.
“I was feeling some pressure because (Brostrom Poulsen) started playing pretty good,” Hernandez said. “I had a couple of easy mistakes at the start of the tiebreaker. But after saving three set points, I knew he was feeling tired as well. So when I got my first set point, I wanted to make him feel the pressure of all the fans that are here. I made everybody be a part of the point and we took it on the first opportunity.”
The win was especially special for Hernandez, who had his parents in the stands all the way from Crevillent, Spain.
Mississippi State clinched the match as No. 107 Petar Jovanovic downed 109th-ranked Francisco Rocha 6-7(6), 6-4, 1-0 (4-1 def. [mc]). Nemanja Malesevic closed out the opener with a 6-4, 4-6, 6-1 victory over Stijn Slump to extend the Bulldogs’ winning streak to five against MTSU.
“It was nearly 2 ½ hours before (Middle Tennessee) got their second point,” Roberts said. “That just shows how resilient our guys are.”
The Bulldogs were able to earn the doubles point in their second match of the day against Tennessee State (1-3).
The team of Ewen Lumsden and Michal Novansky started things off with a 6-2 win over Nicholas Adamec and Taj…
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