Mississippi State’s season officially ended with a loss to No. 1 Ohio State in the third round of the NCAA Tournament on May 11. But three Bulldogs went on to compete in the NCAA individual championships in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Sophomores Petar Jovanovic and Benito Sanchez Martinez, in the doubles bracket, defeated Harvard’s 19th-ranked duo of Daniel Milavsky and Cooper Williams on Tuesday by winning both sets in a tiebreak, 7-6(2), 7-6(4). The following day, Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez — the No. 11 ranked pairing in the nation — defeated No. 9 Sebastian Gorzny and Pedro Vives Marcos of TCU 6-4, 7-5 to advance to the quarterfinals.
MSU’s duo was especially strong on the second serve, winning 14 of 18 points after a fault compared to just 12 of 31 points for the Horned Frogs’ tandem. Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez led 5-2 in the second set before TCU’s team won three straight games to tie the score, but the Bulldogs got a break before serving it out for the victory.
Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez improved to 24-10 on the season and earned their sixth top-20 win of the year.
In singles, Jovanovic fell in the first round against Oregon’s Quinn Vandecasteele 6-1, 6-3. Senior Nemanja Malesevic saw his time in the maroon and white come to an end with a 6-3, 6-2 first-round loss to Florida State’s Antoine Cornut-Chauvinc, the No. 4 ranked player in the country.
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