STARKVILLE – Despite a 13-day break between matches and 20 days since last playing at home, Mississippi State men’s tennis showed no signs of rust during a Saturday sweep.
The 20th-ranked Bulldogs blanked Tennessee Tech 7-0 on Saturday morning and capped the evening off with a 5-2 victory over UAB to improve to 11-1 on the year.
“Since we hadn’t played in two weeks, it could’ve gone really good or really bad,” said junior Carles Hernandez. “We came out locked in, ready to work and it went great today.”
Hernandez and doubles partner Nemanja Malesevic – ranked 33rd nationally – set the tone for the day with their 6-0 victory over Tennessee Tech’s Elias Grubert and Jaime Paquet to start things off. The freshman tandem of Michael Novansky and Benito Sanchez Martinez secured the doubles point for MSU with their 6-4 win over Mika Berghaus and Pol Masafret.
Novansky carried that momentum over to singles where he quickly dispatched Paulo Ramos Martin 6-1, 6-0 while Gregor Ramskogler prevailed over Masafret 6-0, 4-6, 6-0. Ewen Lumsden clinched things for the Bulldogs with his 6-4, 6-3 victory against Evzen Holis.
No. 107 Petar Jovanovic earned his 14th-straight singles win by topping Berhaus 7-6(5), 6-4 on Court 1. Patrick Lazo rallied for his second singles win of the spring against Paquet 1-6, 6-2, 6-1 and Sanchez Martinez closed out the sweep with his 6-4, 7-5 victory against Grubert.
State also claimed the doubles point during their second match of the day against UAB. Jovanovic and Ramskogler won 6-2 over Noah Malige and Nikola Puric to tie Ramskogler with Niclas Braun (2016-19) with 60 career dual match doubles victories, the most in school history.
After Novansky and Sanchez Martinez fell to Parker Bradbary and Roman Postolka 6-3, it was up to Hernandez and Malesevic to pull out the point for the Bulldogs. They were able to top Michal Lusovsky and Georgios Nouchakis 6-3 for their fourth clinch of the season.
Mississippi State also won the first three singles matches to secure the match before the Blazers were able to get on the board. Hernandez, ranked 113th in singles, took down Vojtech Podzemny 6-1, 6-4 while Malesevic…
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