The No. 11 Mississippi State men’s tennis team won the ITA Kick-Off Weekend and earned a spot in the ITA Men’s National Team Indoor Championship, its first appearance in the championship round since 1999. MSU (4-0) will join 15 other teams who advanced last weekend in Seattle, Wash., Feb. 15-18.
The Dogs cruised past the No. 25 LSU Tigers 7-0 Saturday to open the weekend. After taking the doubles point and the first two singles points, freshman Stefan Vinti clinched the overall match with his singles win. More singles wins from James Chaudry and freshman Pedro Dumont gave the Dogs the shutout victory.
Dumont, who claimed his third win in the number six spot after the weekend, said all the freshmen have played well to earn wins.
“It’s hard because we have a lot of pressure to play as freshmen, but it’s fine,” Dumont said. “I think we’re doing pretty well. We have our number one, Romain (Bogaerts), is a freshman and he’s doing an excellent job, and I’m playing good now so I’m feeling so good, and I hope we can keep winning the matches.”
Sunday provided more compelling action as the Dogs bested the No. 21 Auburn Tigers 4-3.
With the match knotted at 3-3, No. 25 Romain Bogaerts defeated Auburn’s No. 74 Andreas Mies 7-5, 7-6(6). Bogaerts fell behind in the second set 5-3 and forced a tiebreaker at 6-6 before claiming the match point.
Before the exciting finish to claim the championship berth, the two squads battled nearly three-and-a-half hours in a classic top-25 match.
After splitting the first two doubles matches, the No. 28 pair of Jordan Angus and Malte Stropp fell to the No. 2 duo from Auburn and lost the doubles point. The Tigers went on to build an early 2-0, but Angus and No. 81 Stropp responded with singles match wins to tie the match.
Stropp said he felt the need to win his singles point and redeem the doubles point loss.
“We were up a break, 7-6, and actually serving for the doubles point. I started serving really bad and felt like it was my fault we lost the doubles point,” Stropp said. “At first I felt really sad about it, but there are still six singles points out there even if you lose the doubles point. I just wanted to win really bad because, like I said, I thought the doubles point was my fault.”
Dumont put MSU ahead with his match win before Vinti fell in three sets and the score was tied once again.
MSU head coach Per Nilsson praised his freshmen for their weekend performance, and said he recruited them to win close matches.
“I brought them here to be a part of matches like this, but I thought it was going to happen when the SEC schedule started. We lost a couple of heartbreakers like this the last two years, and it was really fun to win one,” Nilsson said. “It’s a great experience for them, and for (Bogaerts) to actually pull it off against one of the best players in our conference is great.”
MSU will travel to Jackson to face No. 13 Ole Miss on Thursday in the River Hills Cup.
“It’s one of those matches where I don’t have to do a lot of pep talking. The crowd is against us there, it’s supposed to be neutral but isn’t really, so it’s tough,” Nilsson said. “The last four years we’ve played have been really close. We probably should have won one of the ones we lost and then we won last year, so we’ll see if we can sneak one out this year.”