STARKVILLE — This time last year, Nuno Borges was a top 5 individual player in the country and his Mississippi State men’s tennis team was on the road for the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament, having just missed out on the right to host granted to the top 16 teams. This year, Borges remains one of the best in the nation and MSU is No. 6, as deemed by the NCAA Tournament selection committee, a certified lock to host going into selection day.
Clearly, MSU (20-2, 11-1 Southeastern Conference) could not have gotten here on just Borges alone. Borges will compete for a national championship as an individual once again, just as he did last year; first, he’ll do so as part of a team good enough to do the same.
It is that lineup behind Borges that has MSU hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament Friday and Saturday, facing Tennessee Tech not before 1 p.m. Friday; a win would put it in a second-round match against either Memphis or South Alabama 1 p.m. Saturday. To coach Matt Roberts, the differences from last year to this year are clear.
“We have a legit No. 2 now with Giovanni,” Roberts said of the Italian sophomore Giovanni Oradini. “Last year we had a 2 that could beat anybody or lose to anybody, we were 50-50 there. Now we have a great chance at winning at the 2 and he’s developed so much, going from the 5 to the 2. He won a ton of matches in the fall by building himself up, starting to get confident out there.”
Oradini started building up the confidence to play at No. 2 late in the fall, going on a 8-3 run at the end — with one of those losses coming to a teammate, Strahinja Rakic. Oradini was up-and-down early in the spring, starting it 4-3, but came together and has now won six of his last seven matches that were not suspended. He enters the NCAA Tournament ranked No. 23 in the nation as an individual.
“It’s never a perfect day, it’s never a perfect story, it’s nonstop development and accountability,” Roberts said. “When we have accountability on this team, Giovanni becomes a mental machine for the most part.”
In figuring things out early in the spring, Oradini was not alone.
“I think the big part was in the beginning of the spring we were still experimenting a little bit, we didn’t really know what to expect from ourselves, how good we were,” German freshman Florian Broska said. “I think we surprised ourselves by being so tough, I think that really changed. We’re way tougher on the court: deuces, deciding points, we win more.”
With the improving lineup, MSU does it on all courts.
Rakic has been at No. 3 all season, ending the spring with a 13-6 record. Despite losing his final two matches of the SEC Tournament, he enters the NCAA Tournament ranked 84th nationally as an individual, a ranking he earned through his practice habits.
“He’s training so much harder now, controlling the things he can control and going harder every day,” Roberts said. “Before, he would take days off; he wasn’t used to working hard three hours a day every day, but now he is and we demand that from him. When he sets foot on the court, he believes he should win.
“(Junior Niclas Braun) is the same at 4. He’s always a rock for us. It’s hard to beat Nik: you have to outplay him, you have to overpower him, you have to be ready for a tough, long match. He doesn’t lose much.”
MSU’s No. 6 player has earned the spotlight in recent weeks, as he won a third-set tiebreaker in the SEC Tournament championship match to secure the program’s first such title since 1996. But it is the No. 5 man, freshman Florian Broska, who went 14-5 this spring and was named to the SEC All-Freshman Team.
“For him to be one of the best freshmen in the SEC should give him a lot of confidence,” Roberts said. “I knew he had it in him, I just don’t know that he knew he had it in him.”
The secret is out now: the Bulldogs have a lot in them.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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