After advancing past Oklahoma on Friday, Mississippi State was on the verge of beating host South Carolina in the Southeastern Conference Tournament semifinals Saturday.
With the Bulldogs needing just one more win to clinch the victory, the final two matches both went to third-set tiebreaks. But the No. 3 seed Gamecocks pulled out both, eliminating No. 2 seed MSU 4-3.
The Bulldogs (22-5) received a double bye in the SEC Tournament due to their second-place finish and handled business against the No. 10 seed Sooners, who had won on each of the two previous days.
MSU won the doubles point against Oklahoma as the No. 3 pairing of senior Dusan Milanovic and junior Michal Novansky earned a 6-1 victory, and the No. 1 duo of juniors Petar Jovanovic and Benito Sanchez Martinez — ranked second in the country — won 7-5. Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez defeated the 10th-ranked team of Oscar Lacides and Bruno Nhavene.
Jovanovic started the Bulldogs off on the right foot in singles with a dominant 6-0, 6-1 victory at No. 2. Freshman Bryan Hernandez Cortes was next to finish, winning 7-5, 6-3 at No. 6. The Sooners avoided the shutout as Milanovic, after winning the first set, fell in three at No. 4, but Sanchez Martinez clinched the match at the No. 1 spot with a 6-4, 7-6(4) win. The victory sent the Bulldogs to the semifinals for the first time since 2019.
Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez won their 13th straight doubles match, and Sanchez Martinez’s singles win was his 11th in a row while Jovanovic extended his singles winning streak to eight.
The next day, MSU again won the doubles point, starting with a 6-2 win from the No. 2 team of freshman Niccolo Baroni and junior Mario Martinez Serrano. Milanovic and Novansky wrapped it up with a 6-4 win, leaving Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez’s match unfinished with the Bulldog duo leading 5-4.
Milanovic cruised to a 6-0, 6-3 win at No. 4 singles before South Carolina won the next two completed matches, defeating Baroni at No. 3 and ending Jovanovic’s winning streak at No. 2. Hernandez Cortes bounced back from a rough second set to win 6-1, 1-6, 6-1 at No. 6. But Martinez Serrano, after winning the first set, lost both the second and third in tiebreakers at No. 5, leaving it up to Sanchez Martinez at No. 1.
Sanchez Martinez had swept the first set 6-0 against Conor Thomson, ranked 20th in the country, but lost the second set 7-5 and could not pull out a tiebreaker in the third as the Gamecocks advanced to the championship match.
MSU has a week off before the NCAA Tournament selection show on Apr. 28. The Bulldogs, ranked No. 12, should earn the right to host the first two rounds for the third straight year.
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