Bulldog Roundup: Mississippi State tennis players headed to NCAA Championships

Your daily briefing on what's going on with Mississippi State Athletics

Mississippi State's Petar Jovanovic during the match between the Mississippi State Bulldogs and the Stanford Cardinal at the Hurd Tennis Center in Waco, TX. | Mississippi State Athletics

Mississippi State will be well-represented at the NCAA Individual Tennis Championships starting Wednesday.

On the men’s side, one of the top-ranked doubles partners will be competing. Petar Jovanovic and Benito Sanchez Martinez will look to continue their dominant fall.

The duo won five ranked doubles matches this fall, including two top 15 matches and won the ITA All-American Championship. Both also went undefeated in singles matches at the ITA Southern Regionals.

Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez reached the quarterfinals of the NCAA Doubles Championship in both 2024 and 2025, becoming only the second Bulldog tandem ever to achieve back-to-back quarterfinal appearances joining the duo of Nuno Borges and Strahinja Rakic (2018 & 2019).

Hernandez Cortes continued his breakout season by finishing Top 3 at the ITA Southern Regional Championships and going undefeated at the ITA South Sectional Championships, earning his NCAA Singles Championship bid with a quarterfinal victory.

On the women’s side, the doubles pairing of Charolette Kempenaers-Pocz and Gianna Oboniye will compete in the NCAA Doubles Championship.

The duo earned their qualifying spot at the ITA Southern Sectional Championships in Baton Rouge, La. Following a semifinal loss to the Georgia pair of Deniz Dilek and Emma Dong (6-3, 6-2), Kempenaers-Pocz and Oboniye won a tiebreak in their third-place playoff match to defeat Vanderbilt's 37th ranked pair of Bridget Stammel and Valeria.

Kempenaers-Pocz and Oboniye are the youngest doubles team in program history to compete in the individual doubles championships and first to qualify for the tournament since 2017.

Yesterday’s Results

• No games or matches scheduled.

Today’s Schedule

• No games or matches scheduled.

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