STARKVILLE – Mississippi State’s men’s tennis team remained unbeaten at home following a 4-3 win over Tulane inside the Rula Tennis Pavilion on Friday.
The Bulldogs secured the first three points of the afternoon and clinched the victory at 4-1 before the Green Wave closed out the remaining two matches.
“One of the key takeaways today was about the boys building their resilience,” said head coach Matt Roberts. “Every match is going to have challenges. Welcoming those challenges like a Bulldog is going to allow them to grow and build their confidence.”
MSU (6-1) earned what proved to be a pivotal doubles point to start the day. Petar Jovanovic and Gregor Ramskogler downed Fynn Kuenkler and Sam Scherer 6-4 to open the match but the Green Wave quickly evened things up as Luka Petrovic and Luc Hoejimans defeated Michal Novansky and Benito Sanchez Martinez by the same score.
However, the 42nd-ranked Bulldog tandem of Carles Hernandez and Nemanja Malesevic were able to edge out Charlie Barry and Benji Jacobson in a tiebreaker 7-6(5) to earn the valuable first point.
Jovanovic, ranked 107th in singles, made short work of Petrovic 6-1, 6-2 for his 10th straight win and Ewen Lumsden quickly followed suit with a 6-3, 6-2 victory against Hoejimans to put State ahead 3-0.
But after Sanchez Martinez fell to Rafael de Alba 7-5, 6-4, Malesevic was able to clinch the match for the Bulldogs against Kuenkler, who is ranked 87th nationally.
Malesevic fell behind after losing a first set tiebreaker 6-7(6) but was able to fight back to dominate the final two sets 6-3, 6-0 to earn his second ranked win of the year in singles.
“(Tulane) pushed us and I saw that it could get tricky,” Malesevic said. “I had to really lock it in because I might be the one to clinch. But I also didn’t want to think too much about it. It went through my head but I tried to delete that as fast as I could and focus on the next point and that worked out pretty well.”
Hernandez and Novansky both suffered their first singles losses of the dual match season, each in three sets. Billy Suarez knocked off Hernandez 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 while Scherer topped Novansky 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-2.
“Petar and Ewen took care of business so it was great for us to start very fast in the match to go up 3-0,” said volunteer coach Kareem Allaf. “And then ‘Memo’ came up clutch for us at the end….
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