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Tallahassee, FL – The Florida State men’s tennis team, playing its third match in just over 24 hours, was challenged all afternoon by Stetson Saturday. The Seminoles fell behind 1-0 in doubles before taking that point and then started singles off 1-1 before pulling away from the Hatters (1-2) with three straight wins to move to 5-0 on the year.
“Stetson did a great job,” said FSU Head Coach Dwayne Hultquist. “They played hard. Their guys really competed and battled the whole way through. There were three or four opportunities we had to extend leads and we didn’t. They hung in the match because of that. As a young team, that is something we can really grow from. When you have opportunities to put a team away or set points, you have to take advantage of those. It was good we got a win while we learned that but it shows we got more work to go to get those to close them out.”
For the first time in 2022, the Noles fell behind in doubles dropping the match on court three. On court two, Youcef Rihane and Andy Petrovic took the point 6-3 to even things at 1-1. The deciding match came down to Loris Pourroy and Sebastian Arcila on court one. The pair, who came into the match 2-0 on the season, took the match in a tiebreaker 7-5 to secure the point and move to 3-0.
With the indoor courts being split between four teams, FSU started with lines 4, 5 and 6 to begin singles. John Bernard staked FSU to a 2-0 lead with a 6-3, 6-4 win. After the Hatters cut the lead to 2-1, Richard Thongoana brought FSU within a point of the victory. The senior took his match 7-6, 6-2 for his first singles win of the season. Petrovic clinched the win for the Seminoles as he took the courts after the first group and proceeded to close it out with a 6-2, 6-3 win.
“Waiting for courts to clear before some guys can play is hard,” said Hultquist. “We started our pregame seven hours before we wrapped. Our guys had to wait a long time and that’s not easy. Loris and Andy got off to good starts. We were rolling pretty good and the Stetson player on line one battled back and took the second set.
“Andy did a really good job of finishing it out. He finished it with a break and didn’t have to serve it out at 5-4. There’s a lot to learn from and it was a long weekend and I know our guys are pretty tired too.”
The Noles will travel to Gainesville next weekend to participate in the ITA Kickoff. FSU will open with UNC Wilmington and then face the winner of Florida and Princeton. For the most updated information on the Seminole Men’s Tennis program, please follow us on social at FSUMTennis (IG) and @FSU_MTennis (TW) and log on to Seminoles.com.
