Fresh off their opening weekend sweep in Hawaii, the Mississippi State men’s tennis team faced its toughest test this season against stiff Big Ten opponents in Michigan State and Ohio State over the weekend.
The 16th-ranked Bulldogs first took care of business at Michigan State as they took a thrilling, hard-fought 5-2 decision from the Spartans on Friday night.
Bulldog duo George Coupland and Artem Ilyushin and 12th-ranked tandem Louis Cant and Malte Stropp clinched their doubles matches to give the Dogs a 1-0 lead, overall.
“I felt really good, and our team played really hard in the match,” Cant said. “We all pushed each other on the court so it feels good as a team to finish the doubles.”
The Spartans responded as they split the first four singles matches. Seventy-ninth ranked James Chaudry dropped a tough 6-2, 6-1 decision before 45th-ranked Cant and reigning SEC Freshman of the Year Stropp took their matches 7-5, 6-1, and 3-6, 6-3, 6-0, respectively. Spartan Will Davis battled out a 6-4, 7-5 victory over Bulldog newcomer Ethan Wilkinson to trim the Mississippi State lead to 3-2.
After dropping his first set 3-6, senior Ilyushin rallied to win the next two sets 6-4, 6-3 and clinched the overall match for the Bulldogs.
“Singles was tough. Their guys were playing great and we had to fight through to get the points,” Ilyushin said. “George, Malte and I went down in the first sets, but we didn’t lose the faith, and we felt like we did a good job and fought through early troubles and won in the end.”
On the final match of the evening, 32nd-ranked Coupland also dropped his first set but battled back to win the next set and served for the match, winning 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 and gave the Bulldogs a 5-2 win on the day. Head coach Per Nilsson praised his team for the victory.
“Their courts are really fast and most teams aren’t used to that so we knew it was going to be difficult, but once we got used to that I feel that we did pretty well,” he said. “We fought hard and got out of there with a win, which is sometimes difficult.”
On Sunday the Bulldogs suffered a tough setback at 3rd-ranked Ohio State with a 6-1 loss. The Buckeyes struck fast as they swept the doubles point and the first two singles matches to clinch an early 3-0 lead.  Chaudry made a valiant rally for the Dogs but fell short in his match to 8th-ranked Blaz Rola 7-6, 6-4 to make it 4-0 overall and solidified the win for Ohio State.
The Bulldogs will travel to College Station, Texas next weekend and open with Princeton in the ITA Kickoff Weekend hosted by Texas A&M.
“We have to fix a few things and everybody’s got to start feeling good about their game so that they can play out,” Nilsson said. “Hopefully, we can get past Princeton and play a second-round match to qualify for the national indoors, which is our goal.”
The first home match for MSU will be Feb. 3 against TCU at the A.J. Pitts Tennis Centre.