Mississippi State’s 15th-ranked men’s tennis team made up for a 4-3 loss to South Alabama last season in Starkville Sunday, downing the 29th-ranked USA Jaguars 6-1 at the A.J. Pitts Tennis Centre on the MSU campus. The win upped State’s record to 4-2 on the season. USA fell to 2-3. State now leads the series 7-5. The Bulldogs set the tone for the day by fighting hard to claim the doubles point after losing the first match at the No. 3 position. MSU’s 53rd-ranked pair of Luiz Carvalho and Jerome Le Belicard then overcame an early service break to down Jaguars Jullien Gillet and Zlatko Stupavsky 8-4 at the No. 2 spot. Soon after, 41st-ranked Bulldogs Romain Ambert and Rene-Charles Combette secured their match with USA’s tandem of Vincent Baudat and Kosta Zinchanka by the same score at No. 1 to give State the first point of the match.
Ambert and Combette are 10-1 in their last 11 doubles contests and 8-0 in dual matches together during their careers.
The Bulldogs would carry their fighting mentality into singles play, which would feature four tiebreakers and a three-set affair. State actually grabbed a quick 2-0 lead when Carvalho missed a shutout by one game, routing USA’s Gillet 6-0, 6-1 at the No. 5 position.
MSU went up 3-0 when Ambert, ranked 15th nationally, won a close first set to go on to a 6-4, 6-1 victory over Zinchanka at the No. 1 spot. The victory was Ambert’s 10th in 11 outings and moved his 2002 dual match mark to 6-0.
Though State looked to be in the driver’s seat at that point, all of the other four matches would feature tiebreakers, three in the first set. South Alabama had gained a one-set lead on court Nos. 2 and 3, while courts 4 and 6 went to first-set tiebreaks simultaneously. MSU would secure both of those tiebreaks to roll on to the win.
Next off the court was the No. 4 position, where MSU’s team captain, the 59th-ranked Combette, held off Stupavsky 7-6(4), 6-3 to clinch the team victory for the Bulldogs.
The Jaguars’ lone point of the day would come next, when 48th-ranked Christian Thall staved off MSU’s David Ruiz 6-2, 7-6(2) at the No. 3 spot.
The Bulldogs would finish off scoring with wins in the final two matches. The junior Le Belicard rallied from a one-set deficit and a 3-1 disadvantage in the third set to win 6-7(5), 6-4, 7-5 over Baudat at the No. 2 position. True freshman Aymeric Henou then closed out his match with Jaguar Evan Fowler at No. 6, winning 7-6(3), 6-3. “I was very proud of our effort today,” MSU head coach Sylvain Guichard said, “We fought hard to win the doubles point against some very good doubles players and then kept fighting in singles when we needed big points the most. As I said going in, South Alabama is a good team. Our guys should be proud of this win.”
State’s next action will be Feb. 15, when the Bulldogs continue their current six-match homestand, hosting Murray State at 2 p.m. That match was originally scheduled for this Saturday, but was rescheduled early in the season.