Ohio State men's tennis bounced from NCAA Tournament after loss to Mississippi State

It just isn't the standard for the Ohio State men's tennis team.

The program took home its 19th straight regular-season title this year, but there were chinks in the armor that began to appear. OSU fell to UCLA in the Big Ten Conference Tournament final, went on to make the NCAA round of 16 once again, but that came to an end on Saturday with a 4-2 loss to Mississippi State.

The Buckeyes just haven't been as good with the doubles point this season, and that flaw struck again against the Bulldogs. Things went to a tiebreaker in the third and deciding match after each team put a win on the board, and that pivotal match was lost 8-6 by the duo of Bryce Nakashima and Alex Fuchs to put Ohio State behind by a score of 1-0.

OSU quickly rebounded, though, winning the first two singles matches. Aidan Kim won the showcase match 6-1, 6-4, and that was followed by a straight-set Bryce Nakashima 6-3, 6-4 win over Mississippi State's Bryan Hernandez Cortes on court five. And just like that, the Buckeyes seemed to wrestle control of the match, up 2-1.

But that would be all the points Ohio State would register. Mississippi State evened the match with a 6-4, 6-3 win from Petar Jovanovic over Alexander Bernard on court two, then took a 4-3 lead after a 6-4, 6-4 win on court six from Mario Martinez Serrano.

The Bulldogs scored the final point when Dusan Milanovic beat Will Jansen 7-4 in a second-set tiebreaker to win the match 7-5, 7-6 and send the Scarlet and Gray home earlier than anyone anticipated or wanted. Now, it's off to the offseason to take stock in what went wrong and how to keep this program back to the same spot last year and over that hurdle that's kept it from winning a national championship.

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This article originally appeared on Buckeyes Wire: Ohio State men's tennis knocked from NCAA Tournament in Round of 16



* This article was originally published here

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