STARKVILLE — The plans were made and the hotels were booked by the Mississippi State men’s tennis program for Athens, Ga., already.
They were supposed to leave Wednesday for the Sweet 16 round at the campus of the University of Georgia. No longer are those plans necessary.
The Baylor University program will be using those reservations as the Bulldogs won’t be using them after a crushing 4-3 loss to the Bears Saturday.
The streak between Sweet 16 appearances for the Mississippi State men’s tennis program is now at 11 years.
Baylor University had a lot of roadblocks in their way in Starkville but survived a pair of tests to advance to the quarterfinal round in Athens, Ga., eliminating ninth-ranked MSU in an upset Saturday.
The total match time was six hours, 42 minutes. Baylor survived a first round match of over four hours against the University of Memphis and then patiently waited through a 2 and a half hour rain delay that resulted in the second round matches versus MSU to be moved indoors to the two-court facility of McCarthy Gymnasium.
Over eight hours after the second round match started, Baylor walked away with a 4-3 victory with the deciding match being a 7-6 (5), 7-6 (11-10) victory for Julian Bley in the No. 6 singles match over Bulldogs sophomore Zach White.
“We felt like we were favored in doubles and we were favored in (singles) two, three, four and five matches.” MSU coach Per Nilsson said.
White had to fight off six match points before falling in the second set tiebreaker to end the season for the Bulldogs.
“I just kept telling myself I can win this, I can win this and for the most part I did,” White said. “I had chances to get some set points myself if it wasn’t for some lucky shots myself.”
On two different occasions, White had dominating passing shots get returned by Bleywith floating lob shots over his 6-foot-2 frame and land right on the baseline for a point for Baylor.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever had to fight off that many match points in my life,” White said. “I’ll put it away because I felt I tried my hardest. If I didn’t try my hardest and want it then I’d regret it my whole life but I did want it so I can be happy.”
About an hour after Baylor won a highly competitive doubles point where the three matches were never more than two games apart, the rains came during singles play forcing both teams to finish the second round action indoors.
Nilsson said the loss came down to the unfortunate aspect that the groin injury suffered by sophomore Malte Stropp two weeks ago wasn’t able to heal properly. Stropp was held out of competition Friday in MSU’s 4-0 victory over Alcorn State but was reinserted into the lineup but lost both his doubles and singles match Saturday.
“That’s two points out of the four they won,” Nilsson said. “(During the delay) we tried everything to get Malte even 50 percent healthy in the training room but he just couldn’t move.”
MSU, who was expected to advance to advance to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2001, was forced to scramble for a comeback after losing two of the next three completed matches indoors. The Bulldogs got the momentum back after back-to-back wins from seniors Louis Cant and George Coupland.
Coupland lost the second set of his match 6-2 to Baylor’s Diego Galeano but rebounded to break the Bears freshman from Paraguay early in a 6-4 third set victory.
“It’s a tough way to end a match with a 6-6 tiebreak in both sets mostly because I’ll probably never play a dual match the rest of my life now,” Coupland, a senior and native of England, said.
Both Cant and Coupland will continue their college careers with senior Artem Ilyushin at the NCAA singles and doubles individual championships starting on May 23.
About five hours after their singles match had been halted due to weather, the first set tiebreak between Bley and White restarted with the Bears senior taking five of the next seven points taking the first set.
Before the two No. 6 singles players began their warmup session, both of them knew their match would decide which teams advanced to the NCAA Tournament quarterfinal round.
“The first set tiebreak was really nervous because of all the pressure I felt like I had on me,” White said.
MSU is 1-7 in school history against Baylor in dual matches and 17-17 all-time in NCAA Tournament play. The loss to the Bears program concluded MSU’s stellar season as a team as the Bulldogs claimed their second straight SEC Western Division crown and posted their best record and highest national ranking since 1998.
“Zach really feeds off the energy of the rest of the team, just like everybody else, so if we could’ve gotten him on the court with somebody else instead of having the whole thing on his shoulders then that may be a different story,” Nilsson said.
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