STARKVILLE – No. 16 Mississippi State is moving on to the second round of the NCAA Championships.
The top-seeded Bulldogs made short work of No. 4 seed Alabama State 4-0 on Friday afternoon at the A.J. Pitts Tennis Centre in front of an enormous crowd. MSU will meet No. 2 seed Middle Tennessee State in the championship of the Starkville Regional on Saturday at 1 p.m. for a spot in the Round of 16.
“We took care of business,” said MSU coach Matt Roberts. “We had not played a match in a while, and in those first few minutes the guys were just getting a feeling for competition again. They loosened up and played some awesome doubles after that, and then singles was great. I am just trying to encourage these guys to not take any points off.”
The win improved the Bulldogs to 20-7 on the season and 16-1 at home. Mississippi State will take on a Middle Tennessee team that it defeated 5-2 in Starkville on Jan. 22. The 27th-ranked Blue Raiders blanked three-seed Tulane 4-0 in Friday morning’s match.
Against the Hornets on Friday, MSU quickly established itself by claiming in the doubles point with a pair of 6-1 victories. Gregor Ramskogler and Benito Sanchez Martinez beat Matis Amier and Alexandre Verlaguet for the first win of the day while the No. 81 tandem of Nemanja Malesevic and Michal Novansky clinched the early advantage after prevailing against Samrakshyak Bajracharya and Ruan Du Preez.
Malesevic and Novansky clinched just ahead of Petar Jovanovic and Ewen Lumsden, who were ahead of David Jeanne-Grandinot and Juan Rodriguez 5-2 when doubles play was suspended.
Lumsden, however, was the first off the court when singles started. The graduate from Glasgow, Scotland had a successful showing against Amier 6-1, 6-2 followed by Sanchez Martinez’s 6-0, 6-3 win over Kristopher Johnson.
Moments later, Hernandez, who is ranked 120th in singles, secured the win for the Bulldogs with his 6-2, 6-1 victory against Bajracharya. It was the first match Hernandez has clinched this spring.
“It feels great to clinch,” Hernandez said. “Besides me, all of the rest of the courts were playing great tennis. Today it was me and it feels great, but the rest of the guys were playing great tennis as well.”
MSU is now 5-0 all-time against Alabama State and have outscored the Hornets 23-0 in those matches.
Mississippi State 4, Alabama State 0
A.J. Pitts…
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