The No. 18 Tigers suffered their first conference loss of the season at the hands of No. 5 Mississippi State on Sunday, later punctuating their weekend doubleheader with a dominant shutout performance against Eastern Kentucky.
Auburn entered Sunday with a 10-1 overall record and a lot of momentum coming off a sweep last weekend, including a win against No. 15 Florida in their first taste of conference play and a narrow 4-3 defeat of Tennessee in Knoxville on Friday. That contest saw the Tigers win a hard-fought doubles point with two 6-4 decisions, the eventual deciding factor after each side came away with three points in singles play.
Beginning Sunday afternoon in doubles play, tandems Billy and Freddy Blaydes, Nicholas Heng and Joey Phillips, and Jake Kennedy and Hamza Nasridinov took the court for the Tigers, looking to avenge a January 24th loss to the Bulldogs that occurred during the ITA’s Kickoff Weekend. Mississippi State started off hot and didn’t look back, however, winning the doubles point handily by taking the first two sets with a score of 6-2. Heng and Phillips battled Mario Martinez Serrano and Michal Novansky in a tight contest, trading sets to a score of 4-3, but it was left unfinished after the Bulldogs’ point was sealed.
Mississippi State carried its momentum into singles play, winning the first four matches, which included two-set wins from Peter Jovanovic against Billy Blaydes and Raphael Vaksmann against Freddy Blaydes, extending its lead to 5-0 and clinching the road victory. The Tigers finally managed to gain some traction of their own, though it was too late—after falling behind early, freshman Alan Bojarski put together a dominating 6-0 second set against Bryan Hernandez Cortes to force a third, edging out a 7-5 win after originally trailing 3-0 to mark Auburn’s first point of the match. Nasridinov concluded the afternoon with another three-set contest against Benito Sanchez Martinez, coming out ahead in the first and clinching the point with a 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 victory to make the final score 5-2 for Mississippi State.
Auburn’s evening match against Eastern Kentucky marked a much-needed reset after a tough stretch earlier in the day. The Blaydes brothers opened doubles play with a 6-2 defeat of Nuno Pinheiro and Marek Nano, and Heng and Phillips bounced back from an early 0-2 deficit to defeat Joao Barreto and Ilie Cazac 6-3, clinching the doubles point before a tight 5-4 match between Kennedy and Nasridinov and Fernando Bulnes and Adrian Contreras could be decided.
Kennedy opened singles play with a bang, taking down Contreras, a former Auburn-Montgomery player, with two perfect 6-0 sets. Facing Eastern Kentucky freshman Joao Barreto, Bojarski followed with a first-set bagel of his own and a 6-2 win to put it away, earning his fourth straight singles point dating back to last Saturday and Auburn’s third point of the night. Heng sealed the deal for the Tigers with a pair of 6-2 wins over Marek Nano, making the final score 4-0 Auburn.
Auburn now holds an 11-2 overall record and 2-1 conference record, and will continue its homestand next weekend with a Friday afternoon match against Charlotte before facing rivals Alabama on Sunday.
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