No. 11 Texas A&M men’s tennis headed into Sunday’s match against Ole Miss carrying a pair of wins, but dropped a 5-2 decision to the No. 24 Rebels.
The Aggies currently sit at 9-3 on the season, 4-2 in the SEC. With six games left in conference play, the Aggies will head back to Bryan-College Station to prepare for a battle with Baylor.
A&M started the day from behind as Ole Miss earned the doubles point to start the match. The Rebels’ No. 7 ranked duo of Finn Reynolds and Tim Sandkaulen set the tone early with a win over A&M’s No. 48 duo of senior Carlos Aguilar and grad transfer Bjorn Thomson. This was Aguilar and Thomson’s first doubles loss in SEC play.
Junior Noah Schachter and senior Hady Habib evened the score with a narrow win on court 2, but sophomore Pierce Rollins and senior Valentin Vacherot took a close loss on court 3 securing a Rebels’ point. The Aggies trailed 1-0 early, only the third time they trailed heading into singles play all season.
Seemingly en route to a comeback, the Aggies won the first set on four of the six singles courts. No. 4 Vacherot won on court 2 against Ole Miss’s sole ranked singles player, No. 62 Sandkaulen, tying things up at 1. The Rebels went on to win on courts 5, 6 and 1, securing an Ole Miss win. A&M’s No. 116 Schachter would get one more point for the Aggies with a three-set win on court 4.
Despite going 2-4 in singles play, the Aggies pushed three of their four losses into a third set. The Aggies would fall to 9-3 on the season, while the Rebels evened it up at 5-5.
Bryan-College Station will be home to the next A&M men’s tennis match as the Aggies host the Baylor Bears on Thursday, March 11 at 3 p.m. The Aggies lost to the Bears in February by a score of 4-1. Baylor sits at No. 2 in the nation with a record of 15-2.