STARKVILLE — For the second straight year, Mississippi State fell short of reaching the ITA National Indoor Championships by coming up short at home in the ITA Kickoff Weekend. The No. 9 Bulldogs overcame a rocky start to defeat Pepperdine 4-1 on Saturday but could not turn things around Sunday in a loss to No. 22 North Carolina State by the same score.
“We might only get one or two chances against a good opponent, and today we let two of them slip away,” MSU head coach Matt Roberts said after the loss to the Wolfpack. “You just have to take them when you get them, commit to your tennis, go for it, be clear with your game plan. We have to just work on some things in singles, but I like where we’re at. It was a tough day.”
The Bulldogs (6-1) dropped the doubles point Saturday against the Waves (2-2), with the nation’s 20th-ranked duo of freshman Niccolo Baroni and junior Mario Martinez Serrano falling 6-1 at the No. 2 spot. Senior Dusan Milanovic and junior Michal Novansky lost 6-3 at No. 3 doubles as Pepperdine took a 1-0 lead into the singles portion of the proceedings.
At one point, MSU trailed on all six singles courts, but the Bulldogs battled back to win the first four completed matches. Junior Petar Jovanovic rallied to win the first set in a tiebreak, then took the second set 6-3 at No. 1 singles. Martinez Serrano won by an identical 7-6(3), 6-3 score at No. 5, while Baroni at No. 4 and junior Benito Sanchez Martinez at No. 2 both had to come back from a set down before dominating the second and third sets.
“We were in a good, positive mindset when we went down 1-0,” Sanchez Martinez said. “All of us were still pretty locked in. It didn’t show at the beginning of singles because two or three courts immediately got broken during the first service game. But we all made a good comeback.”
Facing their first ranked opponent of the season the next day, the Bulldogs again came up short in a frustrating doubles point. Baroni and Martinez Serrano lost 6-3, and the ninth-ranked team of Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez fell in a grueling tiebreak. Milanovic and Novansky were deep into a tiebreak of their own when NC State (4-1) wrapped up the match on the No. 1 court.
In singles, Milanovic was shut out in the first set at No. 3 and fell 0-6, 4-6 to put his team in a 2-0 hole. Baroni put MSU on the board with a 6-3, 6-3 victory at No. 4, but Jovanovic and sophomore Roberto Ferrer Guimaraes both lost within seconds of each other as the Wolfpack closed it out. Jovanovic took the second set to a tiebreak against the 17th-ranked singles player in the country, Braden Shick, but could not extend the match.
“I felt pretty good, but I finished my match, I was happy to have won, and then I realized that on most of the other courts, we were losing,” Baroni said. “It was one of our goals this season (to make it to ITA National Indoors), and we worked a lot for this, but they played well. They played better than us, and we have to keep improving and take this experience to work through what we need.”
The Bulldogs are back in action Sunday for a doubleheader at home against Tulane and Tennessee Tech. They will host Memphis and Jackson State Feb. 9 to wrap up their non-conference schedule.
“Our backs were up against the wall after the doubles point,” Roberts said. “The guys are fighting, they’re trying their hardest, and I respect how they’re fighting, but we just have to get better. We have to keep improving. Happy for Niccolo, he did well today. (He) beat a senior, one of their captains. We’re all learning, trying to get better every week, and this was a good match for us to learn from.”
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