STARKVILLE — Matt Roberts is all about staying in the moment.
That’s why Roberts took a moment in the spring of 2014 to consider his good fortune when he was named to lead the Mississippi State men’s tennis team after working one season as an assistant coach for Per Nilsson, who left for Pepperdine.
Roberts never imagined what he could accomplish at MSU. Instead, he focused on the hard work the program needed to maintain its success.
Roberts’ work has paid off, as a young MSU squad has blossomed en route to a fourth-place finish in the Southeastern Conference. At 4 p.m. Friday, No. 21 MSU (18-8) will face No. 3 North Carolina in the NCAA tournament’s Round of 16 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“I didn’t think about it when we were doing well this year,” Roberts said. “You live in that weekly routine, and you can’t think past that.”
The Bulldogs are making their 12th appearance in the Round of 16, and the fourth since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1999.
Roberts led the team to the NCAA tournament last season, but MSU lost 4-1 to North Carolina in the championship of the Chapel Hill Regional. Juniors Rishab Agarwal and Mate Cutura are back from last year’s team, so there isn’t a sense of revenge. But Roberts knows how important Agarwal and Cutura will be with seven first-year players, including six freshmen.
“It’s the feeling of we’re not scared of anybody,” Roberts said. “We’re going to respect them, but they’re (Agarwal and Cutura) going to kind of give us that vibe of, ‘Hey, we saw them last year and we had opportunities last year.’ ”
Cutura won his match against Brett Clark for MSU’s point.
North Carolina (27-4) beat College of Charleston (4-0) and Tulane (4-0) in its regional to advance.
This season, MSU’s youth showed in losses to LSU and Florida State in the first weekend before it won 11 of its next 12 matches. MSU finished 7-5 in the regular season in the SEC and defeated Kentucky in the first round of the SEC tournament before losing to regular-season champion Georgia in the semifinals.
MSU beat Memphis 4-1 and swept host Illinois 4-0 in the Champaign Regional last weekend to advance.
“We put in the work and hard practices throughout the whole year,” freshman Trevor Foshey said. “We were ready and we knew we could even though there was a brand new group of guys. We felt like we deserved this, and we knew we could do it. It’s not a huge surprise.”
Roberts and Foshey agree the team’s play in doubles helped it have so much success in the first two rounds. MSU took the doubles point against Memphis and Illinois, as Cutura and Vaughn Hunter won both their matches. Foshey and Luka Sucevic won their match against Memphis and Agarwal and Niclas Braun won against Illinois.
MSU earned two doubles points in the NCAA tournament despite entering the tournament with a 35-43 doubles record. Roberts decided the Bulldogs had nothing to lose by focusing more on doubles in practice.
“We’ve done a lot of half-court, 1-on-1 stuff to get their volleys going and then building into regular doubles,” Roberts said.
Roberts calls Foshey, who is 10-9, one of the team’s best doubles players. He has seen it in practice this week and is impressed with how the St. Cloud, Florida, native has handled the pressure.
Foshey said the chemistry he has developed with Sucevic enabled him to have so much fun playing doubles last weekend.
“We all feel comfortable with each other and we trust each other,” Foshey said. “Doubles is a lot about being comfortable with each other at key moments. I think it’s just getting better toward the end of the season.”
Roberts hoped the Bulldogs would find that comfort level, but he wasn’t sure when or if it would happen with such a young team. Now that MSU has advanced to the Round of 16, Roberts hopes he and the players will be able to stay in the moment and realize what helped them get there.
“It’s unbelievable to see how fast they’ve grown, matured, constantly risen to the occasion, and come through,” Roberts said.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Ben Wait on Twitter @bcwait
Ben Wait reports on Mississippi State University sports for The Dispatch.
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