Dillon CaderThe No. 15 Ole Miss Men’s Tennis won both matches against Alcorn State on Feb. 2 in convincing fashion, sweeping the Braves twice to extend their win streak to seven.
Ole Miss dominated in the doubleheader that was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but was postponed after bomb threats were made against ASU and several other HBCU’s early Tuesday morning.
The Rebels started rolling early in the doubles portion of the first match. Finn Reynolds and Lukas Englehardt won the first match 6-2, while Nikola Slavic and Simon Junk quickly won their match 6-1. Jakob Cadonau and John Hallquist Lithén had the only loss of the day for the Rebels in the last match, but nonetheless, Ole Miss was able to come out with the doubles win two matches to one.
Ole Miss continued to dominate in the singles portion of the match with a 6-0 team sweep. Slavic started it off with a 6-0, and 6-1 win over ASU’s David Pata. Ole Miss’s Finn Reynolds and ASU’s Lucas Dini followed with two entertaining matches that saw Reynolds coming out on top in both 6-2 and 6-1.
Lithén continued the Rebel success with his 6-1 and 6-2 victories over Luka Rodic. Engelhardt and Cadonau made quick work of their opponents while Walker Stearns swept both of his matches 6-0 to complete the Rebels’ sweep of ASU in game one 7-0.
It didn’t take the Rebels long to earn their seventh victory of the season as both teams agreed to only play the singles segment of the second match and only play to clinch.
Reynolds started game two off by defeating Pata in a win by retirement. Lithén, Engelhardt, Junk and Cadonau followed with dominating victories in their matches and Stearns once again completed the sweep to give the Rebels their second win of the day over the Braves 4-0.
Ole Miss improves to 7-0 on the season while ASU falls to 0-5. The Rebels will try to keep their win streak alive in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sunday when they take on No. 4 TCU.
This will be the Rebels’ toughest test yet as they go to battle against their second ranked opponent of the campaign.
