TUSCALOOSA, Ala., – Mississippi State’s men’s tennis team will venture across the state line for the ITA Southern Regional, hosted by the University of Alabama.
The tournament gets underway on Thursday and features 18 schools from across Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. The event will wrap up on Monday with a trip to next month’s ITA National Fall Championships on the line.
“Everybody wants to go to nationals in San Diego and you’ve got to make the finals of singles or doubles to make it to nationals, so that’s obviously a goal our guys to get to a bigger stage,” head coach Matt Roberts.
The ITA Southern Regional is the second collegiate event the Bulldogs have participated in this fall. MSU posted nine total wins at the ITA All-American Championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma earlier this month.
“Living in the moment is a big thing for our guys and taking it one practice and one day at a time and them focusing on what they need to do to keep improving,” Roberts said.
Singles qualifying for the ITA Southern Regional starts on Thursday with senior Patrick Lazo taking on Jacksonville State’s Alejandro Beneyto Sanchez at 9 a.m. An hour later, sophomore Seth Richey battles Espen Lagarde of New Orleans.
Six other Bulldogs automatically received bids to the main draw, half of which have first round byes. No. 52 Nemanja Malesevic, graduate Ewen Lumsden and junior Carles Hernandez all skipped ahead to the second round while freshmen Petar Jovanovic and Benito Sanchez Martinez along with graduate Gregor Ramskogler will be in action in the first.
Jovanovic squares off against Auburn’s Alejandro Moreno while Sanchez Martinez meets Omar Morsy of Nicholls State. Ramskogler is still awaiting the identity of his first-round opponent.
State will also compete in doubles during the tournament and are headlined the 52nd-ranked tandem of Malesevic and Ramskogler. All four of the Bulldogs’ doubles teams are new this fall.
“I like our doubles pairings,” Roberts said. “We’ve got a lot of new doubles pairings and we’re excited to play a lot of doubles at regionals to see what we have there with eight really good doubles players and four really good teams.”
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