Netmen ousted at SEC TournamentSpecial to The Reflector
Mississippi State’s 29th-ranked men’s tennis team fell in first round action at the 2002 Southeastern Conference Championship Thursday, dropping a 4-2 decision to ninth-ranked Kentucky.
With the setback, the Bulldogs fell to 10-11 overall. UK improved to 19-8 while avenging a 4-3 loss to MSU earlier this season in Lexington.
In doubles, the Wildcats claimed 8-5 victories at the No. 1 and 2 positions to claim the first point of the day. UK led 7-5 at No. 3 when play was suspended after the point had been clinched.
Kentucky would take a 2-0 lead when State’s Luiz Carvalho retired against Wildcat Evan Austin at the No. 3 singles spot. Austin led 6-1, 3-0 when Carvalho was forced to stop playing, still suffering from the shoulder problems that forced him to sit out against Mississippi this past Saturday.
State would gain its first point of the day when sophomore Romain Ambert, ranked 10th nationally, registered an impressive 6-2, 6-0 upset of UK’s seventh-ranked Jesse Witten at the top position. The win was Ambert’s 17th in his last 20 matches and upped his record on the year to 36-9.
The Wildcats extended their lead to 3-1 when 55th-ranked Karim Benmansour downed MSU’s 81st-ranked Rene-Charles Combette 6-3, 6-1 at the No. 2 spot. The Bulldogs would trim the lead back to 3-2 with a 6-4, 6-2 victory from freshman Aymeric Henou over Wildcat Rahim Esmail at the No. 6 spot. UK would then clinch the team victory when 98th-ranked Gustav Pousette held off State’s Jerome Le Belicard 6-3, 6-4 at the No. 4 position.
The final match of the day was suspended, but there was a piece of good news for MSU from that contest in the return of David Ruiz. The senior from Colmar, France, played in his first match since March 20, having been out with a back injury which he had surgery on to repair last month. He was in a first-set tiebreaker with UK’s 118th-ranked Johan Grunditz when play was halted.
“We lost this match, but you have to remember that Kentucky is one of the best No. 7 seeds in SEC Tournament history,” MSU head coach Sylvain Guichard said. “They have a top 10 team, but just struggled a little at the end of the SEC regular season which dropped their position in the draw.”
“We certainly lost some matches today that we could have won, but we did have some good things happen. Romain was extremely solid against one of the best players in the country. Aymeric played well against one of the best No. 6 players in the SEC. And probably the thing I was most happy with was seeing David back in the lineup, and he did very well considering he hasn’t played competitively in a month.” The Bulldogs will now await their fate for the 2002 NCAA Team Championship. State, which is one of only nine teams in the country to have made 11 consecutive appearances in the national championship, is in position to receive its 12th bid in a row to the field.
The selections and bracket for the tournament will be announced Thursday, May 2.