Mississippi State junior tennis player Ivan Bjelica may not have come back a champion from the All-American Championships last week, but he turned a few heads in his attempts.
Bjelica, a native of Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro, was one of three Bulldogs who competed in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association event held in Tulsa, Okla.
Bjelica won three matches in qualifying to advance to the main draw, knocking off two players ranked in the top-100. He opened play with a 7-6, 6-3 win over 71st-ranked Alexei Ivanov of Oklahoma in the first round.
He followed that performance with a 6-7, 6-4, 7-6 victory over 99th-ranked Henrique Cancado of Old Dominion.
Bjelica secured his spot in the main draw with a 7-6, 3-6, 6-3 over Eric Molnar of Colorado in the third round of qualifying, but he fell in his first match in the main draw, dropping a 6-3, 6-1 decision to Stanford’s 104th-ranked Matt Bruch.
Bruch went on to defeat the nation’s second-ranked player and advanced to the semifinals before falling to eventual champion Josh Isner of Georgia.
Bjelica’s fall record now stands at 7-3 after a five-match winning streak. With Bjelica’s spot in the main draw, MSU has now had at least one qualifier in singles or doubles for the main draw in 61 of the last 64 major collegiate events dating back to 1988.
Also competing for the Bulldogs were sophomores Pierre Mouillon and Philippe Frayssinoux. Mouillon made it to the second round of qualifying, beating Sandy Farquharson of Texas-Arlington 6-4, 6-3.
Fellow Freshman Philippe Frayssinoux dropped his first round qualifying match in three sets to Denver’s Niklas Persson.
The lone doubles team competing for MSU was Bjelica and Frayssinoux who dropped their first-round qualifying match to Virginia’s Jarrett Chirico and Marko Miklo by a score of 8-4.
The Bulldogs next action will be in Memphis, Tenn., at the ITA Southeast Region Indoor Championships on Oct. 13-17.