After strong play in the ITA kickoff last weekend, the No. 23 Mississippi State University men’s tennis team continued its strong play at home by taking two out of three matches on Friday and Sunday. The wins came at the expense of the doubleheader against Alcorn State and Rice on Friday, with the loss occurring Sunday. At the weekend’s end, the Bulldogs sit at 5-2 overall, with just under a month away until the start of SEC play against Alabama on Feb. 27.
The early Friday afternoon event saw the Bulldogs start out strong in their doubles match against the Owls, particularly the duo of freshman Juan Cruz Estevarena and sophomore Florian Lakat. The two were able to string together a very solid performance on court one, dispatching the Rice team of Max Andrews and David Warren 6-2 to get the weekend off to a decent start for the home side.
The Bulldogs would soon clinch the first point of the match on court two, as the doubles team of freshman Mate Cutura and senior Tassilo Schmid continued its undefeated start to the season in doubles play. They would ultimately beat the Owls partnership of Srikar Alla and Jamie Malik 6-2, to improve their record to 4-0.
The Bulldogs entered the singles matches with a 1-0 lead and carried the positive momentum built up from the doubles play and rode it to more victories. The Bulldogs got great play from their top player on court one, Lakat, who defeated Rice’s Alla 6-2, 6-3, in rather dominating fashion. 
The two other defining victories came on courts five and six, where two Bulldog sophomores were able to come up big for the home team. First, on court five, Rishab Agarwal won all but one point in his dismantling of Rice University’s Warren. With his final score of 6-0 and 6-1, the Bulldogs moved within one point of clinching the match against the Owls. The death blow came on court six, where Robin Haden won a tiebreaker in the second set to oust Gonzalez in straight sets 6-2, 7-6(5).  The win on court six sealed the victory 4-0 and started the weekend off with a positive result.
The Bulldogs were able to keep up the strong performance against Alcorn State in the second match on the court. MSU breezed through its doubles matches with Agarwal and Haden starting off the match with a 6-1 win against ASU’s Garry Amor and Kilian Salgado at the number three position. The singles matches produced a couple of highly impressive victories in favor of the Bulldogs, starting with Agarwal, who was able to take down Alcorn State’s Amor in straight sets 6-0, 6-0. The win served as Agarwal’s first ever victory in which he failed to lose a single point.
Soon after, Haden was able to win in more dominating fashion than his first singles match of the day, by defeating the Braves’ Salgado 6-1, 6-0. The final straw came when Lakat clinched his match on court one and defeated Santillan 6-0, 6-2. With all other matches suspended, the Bulldogs clinched their second 4-0 win of the day.
Head Coach Matt Roberts was very pleased with the play of his team and in particular, he said he liked the way his team cleaned up some sloppy play early on in the day.
“We had a pretty good first match,” Roberts said. “We had a pretty solid performance in doubles and singles top to bottom was pretty solid. I thought we came out a little careless in doubles but got back into the mode of taking care of business and finished strong in singles in the second match.”
Sunday proved to be a more difficult task, as the No. 42 Red Raiders of Texas Tech came into the match looking to stake a claim to their biggest win of the young season. Due to inclement weather, the match time moved up to 9 a.m. and was played in McCarthy Gymnasium, which houses two courts. Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, singles is all it took for the outcome of the match to be determined, and even a late rally from the home side proved not to be  enough. The Raiders upset the Bulldogs 4-2.
Both of the first two matches ended up being highly contested three-set thrillers that would go in the favor of the Raiders. On court two, Schmid and the Red Raiders’ Hugo Dojas played one of the closest matches of the entire day. After losing the first set 6-1, Schmid answered back to force a third set with a 6-2 decision. As Schmid attempted to come back from a triple break point late to force a deuce point, he could not hold and suffered a break that led to a 6-1, 6-2, 7-5 victory for Dojas.
Court one would see similar heartbreak for the Bulldogs as Lakat was able to win a tiebreaker in the second set to force a deciding third. However, falling behind early 4-0 would prove to be too much of a hole to come back from, and Lakat would end up losing, putting the Red Raiders up 2-0 early.
Things continued to worsen after Agarwal lost in straight sets to Jolan Cailleau, 6-4, 6-4, and increased the deficit to 3-0.
The Bulldogs staged a comeback when Estevarena and Cutura picked up vital points for the Bulldogs in their respected matches to cut into the Red Raider lead, making the Haden and Connor Curry matchup the deciding matchup of the day. The Bulldog sophomore fought valiantly, but it was the Red Raider Curry who made all of the big shots that counted late, as he won in two sets 6-4, 6-4, assuring the loss.
The Bulldogs will return to action this weekend to host Samford and New Orleans on Saturday in a doubleheader. The matches take place at noon and 5 p.m. at the A.J. Pitts Tennis Centre.