News release from Texas A&M Athletics:
The No. 9 Texas A&M men’s tennis team took down the No. 6 Mississippi State Bulldogs in a 4-3 nailbiter on Friday at the Mitchell Tennis Center.
With the score knotted at 3-3, the last match standing was at court 2 with Aggie junior Kholo Montsi in a tense battle with State’s Petar Jovanovic, who entered the day ranked No. 6 nationally.
The players split the first two sets with Jovanovic striking first with 6-3 set victory, but Montsi countered with a hard-fought 7-5 win in the second. In the third set, the pair were tied at 2-2 before Montsi broke the Bulldog’s serve in the midst of a three-game serve to take a 5-2 lead. After Jovanovic held serve, Montsi served out the match at 6-3, clinching the match in the process.
“We knew the match was going to be close and I’m proud of our guys for the way they fought,” Aggie head coach Steve Denton said. “Mississippi State is a heck of a team. They are a tough-minded team and we knew they were going to go away. Kholo played lights-out there in the third set. I think he hit three or four winners in the final game which is unbelievable to be able to do that under that sort of pressure.”
Montsi’s match was the clincher due to the resilient play of the Aggies in the doubles. The Aggies struck first at court 3 as freshman Markus Molder and junior Lathan Skrobarcek cruised to a 6-3 win. At court 2, however, the Aggie duo of Montsi and sophomore Alex Frusina found themselves down 5-1 before righting the ship by taking the next five games to force a tiebreaker. Once in the tiebreaker, the Maroon & White duo clinched the all-important doubles point, 7-4.
Other Aggies contributing singles wins were Skrobarcek and senior Togan Tokac. Skrobarcek shook off a second-set loss to win a three-set battle over Bryan Hernandez Cortes, 6-4, 2-6, 6-2, while Tokac powered his way to victory over Michal Novansky, 6-4, 7-5.
With the win, the Aggies improved to 13-7 overall and 6-3 in SEC play, while the Bulldogs fell to 15-3 overall and 6-2 vs. conference foes.