The Florida men’s tennis team fell, 4-3, to Ole Miss on Saturday at Linder Stadium at Ring Tennis Complex, in a match that saw all six singles matches go to three sets with two of them topping the three-hour mark. Ole Miss jumped to a 3-0 lead, but UF battled back to tie at 3-3 before the Rebels pulled out the final point.
“Ole Miss played hard, played well and deserved to win today,” head coach Andy Jackson said. “I thought we played OK, and from an effort standpoint, we played as hard as you can play. It’s a tough loss, and we need to get over it, which I think we will.”
The Gators move to 11-5 on the season, including 4-1 in the Southeastern Conference, while Ole Miss is now 9-4 and 3-2 in the SEC.
Saturday’s match lasted a total of four hours and 36 minutes under sunny skies and temperatures above 80 degrees.
“We are very well conditioned, but this is not a track meet,” Jackson said. “You still have to hit the ball. The conditioning favored us, but we didn’t take advantage of it today. But we fought unbelievably hard. We have high character and high effort on this team, but these guys want to be champions and you have to be able to take it to your opponent to accomplish that.”
Florida grabbed a quick lead on the three doubles courts, breaking serve on Ole Miss’ first service game on each court. However, the Rebels rebounded and jumped to a lead on courts one and three and rode those courts to the doubles point.
Ole Miss scored the first blow in singles, as Marcel Thiemann topped senior Alexandre Lacroix (Paris, France) on court one, 6-3, 0-6, 6-1. The Rebels then stretched their lead to 3-0 on court three as Tucker Vorster defeated junior Nassim Slilam (Paris, France), 1-6, 6-0, 7-6(3),
Freshman Andrew Butz (Vero Beach, Fla.) got the Gator rally off the ground with a 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 win over Adrian Forberg-Skogeng on court six.
The Gators continued their climb back into the match when sophomore Billy Federhofer (North Miami, Fla.) took control of his court four match with a 4-2 lead in the third set and Jonas Lutjen retired with apparent cramping after two hours and 35 minutes. Lutjen had attempted to fight through it, taking a timeout with the trainer to have his legs worked on, but his movement was severely limited in the final game before ceding the match.
Freshman Spencer Newman (Miami, Fla.) and sophomore Sekou Bangoura Jr. (Bradenton, Fla.) continued battling as their respective matches each passed the three-hour mark. Newman rallied from a 4-1 third-set deficit against Chris Thiemann on court five to tie at 4-4. Meanwhile, Bangoura jumped to a 4-2 lead and cruised down the home stretch for a 5-7, 7-5, 6-2 win over Kalle Norberg.
“I just kept myself to keep going,” Bangoura said. “I knew if I just kept fighting we’d have a chance. I was feeling fine headed into the third set. I knew they weren’t used to these conditions so I thought if I kept him running he would eventually wear down.”
However, moments after Bangoura’s victory evened the match at 3-3, Newman’s serve was broken at 5-6, and the Rebels staved off UF’s furious rally with Thiemann’s 6-2, 3-6, 7-5 win.
After two straight hard-fought 4-3 losses, Bangoura talked about the team’s mindset moving forward.
“As a group, we just have to keep encouraging each other,” he said. “That’s the good thing about team tennis, having a group of guys around you to help pick each other up when things get rough.”
The Gators return to action next weekend with just one match, a 2 p.m. ET meeting at Mississippi State on Saturday, March 26.
