Following a two-week break, the Mississippi State men’s tennis team survived its final tuneup before Southeastern Conference play, defeating Tulane 4-3 in New Orleans on Sunday.
The No. 24 Bulldogs (8-3) dropped the doubles point to the Green Wave (2-7), though their No. 3 pairing of Roberto Ferrer Guimaraes and Nemanja Malesevic won in a tiebreak. MSU won the first four completed singles matches, all in straight sets, to clinch the victory.
Benito Sanchez Martinez bested his Tulane opponent 6-1, 6-2 at No. 5, and Petar Jovanovic, the No. 23 ranked singles player in the country, won 6-4, 6-3 at No. 2. Carles Hernandez won at No. 3 without much trouble, and Malesevic needed a tiebreak win in the second set to close out his match at No. 1.
The Bulldogs open the SEC portion of their schedule at home against Georgia this coming Sunday.
MSU women fall to Tulane, defeat New Orleans
In a Friday doubleheader in the Big Easy, the Bulldogs were shut out 4-0 by the Green Wave but rebounded to beat the Privateers 4-1 later in the day.
MSU’s No. 3 doubles team of Chloé Cirotte and Athina Pitta won its match, but that was all the Bulldogs (9-3) could muster against Tulane (6-4) as Cirotte and Pitta each lost in straight sets in singles, and Dharani Niroshan battled back to force a decisive third set but ultimately fell short.
Cirotte and Pitta were again the lone bright spot for MSU in doubles against New Orleans (1-2) as the Bulldogs’ top two pairings each lost narrowly, but this time MSU dominated in singles. Cirotte’s match finished first as she dispatched her opponent 6-1, 6-2, and Niroshan, Alexandra Mikhailuk and Jayna Clemens each dropped a total of four games across two sets.
MSU opens conference play Saturday at Ole Miss. The Bulldogs finished winless in the SEC last season.
“It was a sad performance from us all in the first match against Tulane,” first-year head coach Chris Hooshyar said. “But we have to look at every day as a learning experience. It’s all about building the program and building the identity that we want to have for the future. We’re all in this together, coaches and players.”
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