The Florida men’s tennis lost a heartbreaker
to No. 13 Mississippi State, 4-3, on Sunday afternoon at Linder Stadium at the
Ring Tennis Complex. After dropping the doubles point, the Gators stormed back
in singles to take a 3-1 lead, but the Bulldogs pulled out the final three
matches to earn the victory.
“I’ve got to give Mississippi State credit,”
said head coach Bryan Shelton. “Those guys just continued to fight and they got
stronger as the match went along. They gathered some momentum and didn’t let up
and they didn’t give it back. We kind of needed a little bit of help there and
they didn’t give us any help. My hat’s definitely off to them. They came on the
road and played tough, as we knew they would.
“I was still very proud of our guys, losing
the doubles point but coming back in the singles and putting three points on
the board for us. That was impressive.”
Mississippi State jumped on top in doubles
after some close matches on all three courts. Florent Diep and Gordon Watson
finished first with an 8-5 win over the Bulldogs’ Pedro Dumont and Ethan
Wilkinson at No. 3 doubles. MSU’s 15th-ranked duo of Jordan Angus and Malte
Stropp beat Stephane Piro and Bob van Overbeek, 8-6, and then Mississippi State
won the deciding point on court two, as Romain Bogaert and Zach White won 8-5
over Mike Alford and Luke Johnson.
In singles, Alford breezed through the first
set, 6-1, and closed out Angus, 7-5, in the second set to even the match at 1-1
overall. Next off the courts was van Overbeek, who gave UF a 2-1 lead after beating
James Chaudry, 6-3, 6-4, at No. 3 singles. Diep, playing at No. 2 singles, took
down No. 50 ranked Stropp, 6-4, 6-1.
“Flo played extremely well today,” said Coach
Shelton. “I think he got a lot of confidence from the Ole Miss match and really
took it today and rose to the occasion. He beat a very good player. Bob put
another win on the board for us today, and Mike as well. For all three of those
guys to rally after the doubles was great and we had a chance.”
With three matches left on court, Florida
needed just one more point to clinch a victory. After Johnson won the first
set, 6-3, White won a tiebreak in the second set to force a third set. At the
same time, No. 20 Bogaert defeated Piro, 6-3, 6-4, on court one to make the
score 3-2.
Johnson seemed to run out of gas after the
tiebreak, and White closed it out 3-6, 7-6 (5), 6-0. On court six, Dumont won
the first set against Watson, 6-3, but the Gator responded with a 7-5 win in
the second, forcing a winner-take-all third set for the team victory. After
going up an early break in the set, Dumont was able to hold serve the rest of
the way and win the final set, 6-4, to clinch the win.
“In this game you’ve got to seize the
opportunities when they are there,” said Coach Shelton. “Today we didn’t seize
them and they got the better of us. We’ll regroup and be ready again on
Wednesday for Bethune-Cookman.”
