No. 8 MSU Set For Saturday Bout At No. 38 Arkansas

Saturday, March 30

Fayetteville, Ark.

1:00 PM

Mississippi State

Arkansas

No. 8 MSU is set to take on No. 38 Arkansas on Saturday in Fayetteville.

Photo by: Blake Williams/MSU Athletics

No. 8 MSU Set For Saturday Bout At No. 38 Arkansas

March 29, 2019 | Men's Tennis

Live Scoring 2018-19 Men's Tennis Stats (PDF)

by Caleb Garner, Graduate Assistant/Communications

STARKVILLE – Riding a five-match winning streak in SEC play, the No. 8 Mississippi State men's tennis team is set for a Saturday matinee match at No. 38 Arkansas (11-10, 2-5 SEC). First serve for the bout at the Billingsley Tennis Center in Fayetteville is set for 1 p.m. CT.

The Bulldogs (15-3, 7-1 SEC) are coming off a pair of tight 4-3 wins against top-25 opponents and have claimed eight of their last nine SEC matches in the regular season dating back to last season.

MSU In The Oracle ITA Rankings …
The Bulldogs are currently ranked eighth nationally, marking the 20th straight edition of the rankings in which MSU has appeared in the top 25 and its 16th appearance in a row in the top 10. In the ITA national singles rankings, two-time All-American Nuno Borges leads three State players at No. 2 in the nation (matching his career-best), while Giovanni Oradini comes in at 94thnationally. State boasts a pair of ranked doubles tandems in fourth-ranked Niclas Braun and Oradini and No. 8 Borges and Strahinja Rakic. The Bulldogs are one of just two programs in the nation with more than one duo in the top 10.

Know The Foe: Arkansas
Arkansas enters Saturday's outing coming off a tough 4-3 setback at Ole Miss on Thursday night. Oscar Mesquida is the lone ranked Razorback in singles, coming in at 52nd nationally and playing No. 1 singles.

Need To Know …

Mississippi State is playing its 95^th season of men's tennis, with Matt Roberts in his fifth season at the helm.
MSU's No. 8 national ranking marks the 20^th straight week the Bulldogs appeared in the top 25 of the Oracle ITA Rankings and its 16^th straight appearance in the top 10.
Roberts ranks third all-time in career coaching wins at MSU (97).
The Bulldogs have won the doubles point in 27 of their last 29 matches.
MSU holds a 29-7 lead in the series against Arkansas since 1973. The Bulldogs have been dominant of late, winning 10 in a row and 13 of the last 15 meetings.
Nuno Borges now ranks atop the MSU career wins charts in dual match wins (121) and dual match singles wins (72), while ranking third in singles wins (107), sixth in total victories (168) and tying for sixth in dual match doubles triumphs (49).
Borges has won a career-best 17 straight matches and is 16-0 in dual match singles play this spring.
Borges and Strahinja Rakic team up to form MSU's all-time winningest doubles pair (50), while Niclas Braun and Giovanni Oradini are third with 41 wins.
Braun is currently second in career doubles wins (83) and fourth in dual match doubles wins (53) at MSU.
Trevor Foshey has won five of his last six singles matches, including three in a row.

Live Scoring/Video
Live scoring will be available for Saturday's match via StatBroadcast.

Last Time Out For MSU…
On Sunday, MSU extended its impressive home winning streak to 24 matches with a tight 4-3 victory against Georgia. The Athens-based Bulldogs got off to an early 1-0 lead by taking 6-3 decisions on courts 1 and 3 before MSU went up 2-1 with a pair of dominant, straight-set victories by Strahinja Rakic and Nuno Borges. Georgia then went up 3-2 with wins on courts 4 and 6. Giovanni Oradini knotted up the score at 3-all with a hard-fought three-set win over UGA's 13th-ranked Jan Zielinski. On court 5, 78th-ranked Philip Henning led MSU's Trevor Foshey 5-2 30-0 in the third set, but fell to a hard ankle injury. The Georgia freshman finished out the match, but Foshey won the final five games to clinch the victory for MSU. The win marked State's second straight against UGA.

Next Up For MSU …
The Bulldogs will conclude their 2019 regular-season home slate on Friday, April 5, taking on in-state rival Ole Miss at 3 p.m. CT. Prior to the match, MSU will honor its four senior Bulldogs – Borges, Braun, Foshey and Rakic - in a special Senior Day ceremony.

For more information on the Mississippi State men's tennis program, follow "HailStateMT" on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.