Friday was the first time since Sep. 23, 2017 that Giovanni Ordini and Niclas Braun have played a match together, and the change led to Mississippi State University (5-1) winning the doubles point in their match with San Diego State University (0-5).

“When you play with someone for so long, you can sometimes lose your communication, you can lose your energy, and your problem solving,” head coach Matt Roberts said. “At number one, Nic and Trevor got into a bit of a rut, with how they were going to communicate and get through some of these matches.”

The change in doubles was also supposed to help Gio and Florian when they are struggling by matching them with Nic and Trevor, two guys who have experience and are leaders.

“What you imagine is when things are getting hard, or just the day-to-day stress of our hard practices we do. That guy is going to be able to uplift that guy that is being negative,” Roberts said. “It is one of those things that we are not scared to do that, it is all part of development, and after today, it looks great.”

MSU won the doubles point to take a 1-0 lead going into singles, court one; however, suspended play as Strahinja Rakic, a junior from Belgrade, Serbia, felt he and Nuno played well, despite being unable to finish.

“I think we all started pretty sharp in both doubles and singles,” Rakic said. “I think me and Nuno did pretty well today, I did not think we returned good in the beginning, but as soon as we cleaned up our returns we broke the guys and we had everything in our hands.”

In singles, MSU won five straight courts and nearly swept SDSU 6-1.

For Rakic, it was a day to see how his elbow would hold up. Rakic felt he reacted well after not being able to serve for 10 days.

“I’ve been struggling with my elbow for a while, it has been 10 days since Oklahoma, this was the first day for me with serving and we did not know what to expect,” Rakic said. “I started hitting forehands two days ago, it was kind of weird because everyone was looking at me, waiting to see how I’m going to react to everything.”

In MSU’s blowout victory, freshman Hunter Harrison got some playing time in singles as he has worked very hard, earning respect from the players and coaches. 

“It was a good moment for him, and the guys enjoy seeing him out there,” Roberts said. “He has a huge impact on our team in the things that people do not see, so we are constantly trying to support him and let him know he is impacting and helping our team.”

MSU’s game against Pepperdine College on Sunday was canceled due to rain. Their next match is at Tulane on Feb. 23 before they open up SEC play against Auburn on March 4.