After its strong start to the season, sweeping Butler University and Ball State University, Indiana men's tennis fell in an early test against No. 7 Mississippi State University on Jan. 18 at the Indiana University Tennis Center in Bloomington.
In the last match before the Intercollegiate Tennis Association kickoff, the Hoosiers finished the day losing six matches in a row after their hot start from the doubles side.
Doubles three teammates redshirt junior Facundo Yunis and sophomore Braeden Gelletich got things going with a 6-4 victory to continue their momentum from the last weekend.
The doubles teams won two out of their three matches as redshirt junior Sam Landau and senior Jip Van Assendelft defeated the No. 2 ranked doubles team in the nation in a nail-biting tiebreaker that saw a final score of 7-6 (7-4).
It was a near sweep from the double's men, but graduate student Michael Andre and sophomore Matteo Antonescu fell in a tiebreaker match 6-7 (3-7). The loss meant the Hoosier singles would need to split their matches to secure the victory.
Mississippi State has five players ranked in the top 125 singles players in the country compared to Indiana’s one. The first singles match of the day featured number thirteen ranked senior Petar Jovanovic from Mississippi State. Indiana’s No. 2 singles player Van Assendelft took on the challenge after not playing a singles match in the first two matches of the season but fell short 6-3 (6-4).
On the No. 1 singles court, Landau battled with his serve, winning the first set 6-3 and narrowly losing the second set 5-7. However, in the third set, after already dealing with injuries throughout college, Landau had to forfeit the match due to an injury giving the win to the Bulldogs.
The winning continued for the rest of the day in favor of the Bulldogs. Yunis and junior Ben Pomeranets lost in two sets while Andre made the second set close but fell short.
With the victory already sealed for the Bulldogs, singles five player Gelletich won his matches first set in a tiebreaker. In the second set, he went back-and-forth with the 125th-ranked singles player, freshman Raphael Vaksmann of Mississippi State but lost a service game, resulting in a second set loss. Gelletich ultimately couldn’t find his footing in the third, which resulted in an overall 6-1 loss for the Hoosiers.
Indiana will have a chance to bounce back on Friday, as they travel to Charlottesville, Virginia to face off against the No. 5 University of Virginia. Friday’s match will be followed by a Saturday showdown against Cornell University or Michigan.
