Baylor scored three three-set singles wins Saturday as the 16th-ranked Bears came back against 14th-ranked Mississippi State 4-3 in the season-opening dual match for both teams. It marked State’s first loss in a season opener since 1990. State gained the early advantage in the match by taking the opening doubles point with wins at the No. 1 and 3 positions. At the top spot, the 41st-ranked MSU duo of Romain Ambert and Rene-Charles Combette upset Baylor’s eighth-ranked team of Markus Hornung and Reiner Neurohr 8-6. MSU’s other win came from Luiz Carvalho and Aymeric Henou, who won 8-5 at No. 3 over Bears Mike Garcia and Matias Marin 8-5. That contest was the first doubles match of the freshman HenouOs Bulldog career.
In singles, MSU gained the early advantage as well, taking the first set on four of the six courts, but Baylor would force a third set in three of those four to setup its comeback. The Bears evened the match when junior Zoltan Papp downed State junior Combette, ranked 59th, 6-0, 6-2 at the No. 3 position.
MSU went on top 2-1 when Ambert won a battle of top 20 players at the No. 1 spot. The sophomore Bulldog, ranked 15th nationally, upset third-ranked Bear freshman Benjamin Becker 6-3, 6-4 to register his 20th win of the year. It also marked the highest-ranked player Ambert has beaten in his two-year Bulldog career.
The last four matches of the day all went three sets and the Bears would claim wins in three of the four to post the team victory. Baylor knotted the match at 2-2 when Neurohr, ranked No. 91, held off Bulldog David Ruiz 2-6, 6-2, 6-2 at the No. 4 spot. The Bears went up 3-2 when Marin overcame losing the first set 6-0 to down Carvalho 0-6, 6-1, 6-3.
The clinching match would come at the No. 2 position where Hornung, ranked 25th, posted a tight 7-6(2), 3-6, 7-6(3) win over MSU’s Jerome LeBelicard. Soon after, State’s Henou claimed victory in the first dual match singles contest of his career, downing Armando Carrascosa 6-0, 6-7(5), 6-2 for the final point of the day.
“This was a tough match for us to lose,” Sylvain Guichard, who made his head coaching debut Saturday, said. “We put ourselves in position to win against a very good team on the road, but did not get things done when it counted. Baylor deserves a lot of credit as well for not giving up when they were down early. We just have to regroup and get ready for the next one.”
State now returns home to host rival Southern Miss on Tuesday. Match time is slated for 2 p.m. at the A.J. Pitts Tennis Centre. The Bulldogs will then face fifth-ranked, arch-rival Mississippi in the River Hills Cup on Jan. 31. The action will get under way at 5 p.m