Mississippi State’s 28th-ranked men’s tennis team recorded an impressive 6-0 shutout of No. 18 Arkansas Sunday afternoon on the MSU campus.With the win, the Bulldogs improved to 10-9 overall, 3-7 in the Southeastern Conference. The Hogs fell to 13-7, 3-7. The win also gave MSU a 14-4 advantage in the series, 11-0 since UA joined the SEC in 1992. MSU earned the first point of the day by posting victories at the No. 1 and 3 doubles positions. First off the court were Bulldogs Luiz Carvalho and Jerome Le Belicard with an 8-2 triumph over Razorbacks Kristofer Ivarsson and Nathan Price at No. 3. State’s 24th-ranked duo of Romain Ambert and Rene-Charles Combette then notched an 8-4 win over UA’s tandem of Tiago Azevedo and Oggie Kolev at No. 1 to clinch the doubles point. In singles, things were very tight early, but MSU would win five of the six first sets by either 6-4 or 7-5 scores to setup the eventual team victory. State gained a 3-0 lead in the match with victories at the bottom two positions in the lineup.
Sophomore Max Fomine came back from a 5-4 (and service break) deficit in the first set to register a 7-5, 6-1 victory over Arkansas’ Azevedo at the No. 6 position. Bulldog freshman Aymeric Henou then posted a 6-4, 6-4 win over Ivarsson at No. 5. The Bulldogs would then register wins at the top two positions to clinch the team win. While Combette was locked in lengthy final game on court No. 2 with Price, Ambert would provide the fourth and decisive point for MSU at No. 1. The seventh-ranked sophomore rallied from being down 5-4 and a break in the second set to win 6-4, 7-5 over Kolev, ranked 32nd.
The win was the 34th of the year for Ambert (now 34-9), making him the first 34-match winner for MSU in a single season since Mark Jeffrey went 34-20 in 1989. He also improved to 15-3 in individual-match singles on the year. Moments after that, the 78th-ranked Combette would finally break Price to post a 6-4, 6-2 victory and put MSU up 5-0 in the match. At No. 3 singles, play was suspended late in the second set between Carvalho and UA’s Aleksey Bubis by mutual agreement of the head coaches. At No. 4, MSU’s Le Belicard completed the shutout with a 7-5, 2-6, 7-6(4) victory over Eduardo Pacheco, the junior’s third consecutive triumph.
“This was a big win for us today against a solid Arkansas team,” MSU head coach Sylvain Guichard said. “We did a very good job of fighting hard today when the matches were close. There was a point early in singles where we could have lost the first set in every match and we ended up winning five of them. Those are the types of things that are so important every time out.