Three wins down, three wins to go.
Ohio State men’s tennis punched its ticket to Stillwater, Oklahoma, where the final three rounds of this year’s NCAA tennis championship will be held, with a 4-1 victory over No. 16 seed Mississippi State in the NCAA Super Regionals on Saturday.
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— Ohio State M Tennis (@OhioStateMTEN) May 11, 2024
The No. 1-ranked Buckeyes, who earned their third win of NCAA Tournament play and improved to 33-1 for the season with Saturday’s win, will face No. 8 seed Columbia in the quarterfinals on Thursday. The match is scheduled to begin at noon and will be broadcast on ESPN+.
Playing on its home court in Columbus for the final time this season, Ohio State started the match by securing the doubles point. While Andrew Lutschaunig and Justin Boulais suffered a 6-1 loss to Carles Hernandez and Dusan Milanovic, Ohio State’s duos of Robert Cash and JJ Tracy and Cannon Kingsley and Jack Anthrop both earned 6-2 wins over their opponents to give the Buckeyes the early 1-0 advantage.
Boulais gave the Buckeyes their first singles point with a dominant 6-1, 6-0 victory over Nemanja Malesevic. Cash extended Ohio State’s lead to 3-0 with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Roberto Ferrer Guimaraes.
Mississippi State got on the board with a 6-4, 6-2 win by Petar Jovanovic over Kingsley. The Bulldogs took two of the three final matches into second-set tiebreaks, but Anthrop clinched the match for the Buckeyes with a 6-3, 7-6 win over Benito Sanchez Martinez.
The top-ranked Buckeyes, who finish the year with a perfect 16-0 record in home matches, are looking to win their first-ever NCAA championship. Ohio State has advanced to the NCAA quarterfinals 16 times since 2004 – all under longtime head coach Ty Tucker – but has yet to claim the sport’s top prize. The Buckeyes advanced to the national championship match last year before suffering a 4-0 loss to Virginia, the No. 3 seed in this year’s tournament, in the NCAA final.
“To win another one at home is nice, and we've done pretty good during the last few years in home tennis, so to be able to protect our home court advantage and get to the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament feels good, but now the work starts,” Tucker said after Saturday’s win.
