The N.C. State men’s tennis team continued its strong play by defeating No. 33 Virginia Commonwealth and No. 26 South Carolina by identical 4-3 scores this weekend at the J.W. Isenhour Tennis Center.
Two weeks before, the Wolfpack faced off against this same VCU team in Knoxville, Tenn., at the ITA National Indoor Tournament and found itself on the wrong end of a 4-3 scoreline. This time in Raleigh, however, the roles were reversed.
Sophomore Simon Norenius held off the Rams’ freshman Vuk Velickovic in a decisive third set at No. 6 singles, 6-4, 2-6, 6-3. This came after fellow sophomore Thomas Weigel dropped a third-set tiebreaker at the No. 3 spot that would have given the Pack the win.
“We haven’t had any easy matches so far this year,” head coach Jon Choboy said. “VCU is the best team in their conference by a mile. It only helps us.”
The match was tight throughout as State needed a tiebreak to steal the doubles point. After courts two and three split matches, State’s junior Robbie Mudge and freshman Ian Dempster defeated VCU’s seniors Alexis Huegas and Alejandro Argente, 8-7 (7-4), to give the Pack an early 1-0 lead. Mudge was also the first player to finish in singles, doubling State’s lead with a 6-4, 6-1 over Michal Voscek at No. 2.
The Rams battled back by taking the next two matches in three sets each, with freshman Jean Baptiste-Mateo defeating senior Sean Weber 6-2, 0-6, 7-5 at No. 4 and Huegas outdueling junior Austin Powell 6-0, 5-7, 6-4 at No. 1. Freshman Nick Horton put the Pack back on top with a 6-1, 6-4 win over Wilder Pimentel at No. 5, setting up the exciting finish where Norenius closed the deal for the Wolfpack.
“I think our nonconference schedule is very important,” Mudge said. “These are the matches where we can say we learned something. You don’t really grow as a team if you just keep winning 7-0, 7-0, 7-0.”
Against the Gamecocks on Sunday, State started things off in the same fashion as Friday, taking the doubles point as Weber and Horton topped senior Chip Cox and junior Kyle Koch, 8-5. The Pack clinched the doubles point when Mudge and Dempster beat senior Tsvetan Mihov and junior Thiago Pinhero by a score of 8-2.
The teams traded blows in singles play, as the Gamecocks momentarily knotted the match at one behind a 6-4, 6-2 win by Pinhero over Weigel at No. 3. Powell put the Pack back in the lead by disposing of Mihov, 7-5, 6-2, at the top spot. But USC tied the match once again when junior Andrew Adams knocked off Horton by identical 6-3 scores.
After Weber breezed past Cox at No. 5, 6-1, 6-2, attention swung to court No. 2 at the Isenhour Tennis Center, where Mudge was locked in a tight three-setter with Koch.
“We’ve had a lot of guys in pressure situations,” Choboy said. “Simon came up the other day, Robbie’s come up a couple of times. It could be a different guy on a different day, but they do a really good job.”
After dropping the first set, Mudge was a game from defeat but held strong and forced a third, where he held a 5-4 lead and served for the match. The junior from Winston-Salem was unable to convert, however, and the players traded games until a tiebreak. From there, it was all Mudge, as he took an early lead and never looked back, defeating Koch 3-6, 7-5, 7-6(2) and giving State an unassailable 4-2 lead.
“I played a very bad game at 5-4. I made a lot of unforced errors,” Mudge said. “But I told myself that if it got to a tiebreak, I wasn’t going to slip up again.”
After taking out the Gamecocks, N.C. State defeated Longwood, 7-0, in the second match of the Pack’s Sunday afternoon doubleheader to conclude its superb weekend.
