Continuing their Southeastern Conference winning streak, No. 12 Texas A&M men’s tennis took down the No. 32 Auburn Tigers, 5-2. The Aggies are now 4-2 in SEC play, strong going into the remainder of their season.
Starting the day with doubles points, only one Aggie pairing came out victorious over the Tigers. Off to a strong start, the Maroon and White senior pairing Luke Casper and Giulio Perego defeated Auburn’s pairing of junior Thomas Kennedy and redshirt sophomore Nicholas Heng, 6-3.
Not able to build off the doubles win on Court 5, the other two Aggie pairings fell short and lost the overall doubles point. No. 52 Aggie duo junior Togan Tokac and freshman Theo Papamalamis were defeated by the Tigers’ No. 13 senior Will Nolan and junior Billy Blaydes, 6-4. The next pair unable to finish the job for A&M was senior JC Roddick and freshman Lathan Skrobarcek, who lost a close 7-6 battle against Auburn’s freshman Alex Frusina and freshman Joey Phillips.
“I thought the doubles point was a very good point …,” coach Steve Denton said. “I have to give Auburn credit, they played a good tiebreaker to win it.”
The loss from the doubles play did not frighten the Aggies, as they quickly showed Auburn who was in charge of the match.
Gaining the first point for the Aggies to equalize the score was senior Alan Magadan with his 1-6, 6-4, 6-4 victory over Blaydes. The McAllen native is on a two-game winning streak over his SEC opponents.
Next to close for the Aggies was sophomore Tiago Pires defeating opponent Phillips 7-5, 6-3. Pires added this game to his current six-game winning streak, with no losses against any SEC competition throughout the season.
Auburn gained momentum coming back to tie the score at 2-2 after Frusina came back from a tightly fought battle against No. 45 Roddick to gain the point for the Tigers. The two went into a third tiebreaking set to complete the Auburn turnaround, 1-6, 6-4, 6-4.
Bringing the Aggies back on top, Casper defeated freshman Hamza Nasridinov, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4. This is Casper’s first singles win against any SEC opponent so far this season, which ended a three-game losing streak.
To further the Fightin’ Farmers lead, No. 38 Papamalamis took the win over Nolan in another hard-fought duel, 6-2, 4-6, 6-1. This is Papamalamis’ second win over a conference team, bringing some momentum to his singles play after some earlier losses this season.
Finalizing the Aggies victory was another long-fought match as Tokac beat Heng, 6-0, 6-7, 6-4. Tokac also has no losses over SEC opponents and has no losses in his last eight singles matches.
“Our guys were able to right the ship, we won 5 first sets, but Auburn kept fighting,” Denton said. “They are a really good team, but our guys stayed tough the whole night. I was pleased overall with the match and how we competed on every court. That was a really good SEC battle.”
The Aggies are back on the courts again at Mitchell Tennis Center Saturday, March 8, at 1 p.m., hoping to extend their SEC winning streak against the No. 24 Florida Gators.
