Men's Tennis Defeats Indiana, 4-3

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Michigan State men's tennis won 4-3 over Indiana in a thrilling match on Friday night inside the MSU Tennis Center. The match came down to the wire with MSU earning the tiebreak point after a victory at No. 1 singles by senior Jack Winkler.

The Spartans are now 14-10 overall with a 1-4 mark in Big Ten play, picking up their first conference win of the season. Indiana moves to 5-12 and 0-4 in Big Ten matches. Michigan State won matches at No. 1, 3, 4 and 5 singles to secure the victory.

"The guys fought hard," head coach Gene Orlando commented. "Indiana took the doubles point, and to be down one to three and come back and win this match with it all coming down to Jack Winkler at number one ... he's the guy you'd want on the court to get that win, especially on senior weekend. I'm proud of the guys, we dug deep, hung in and followed our motto: faith and trust. It was an awesome win."

The doubles point was won by the Hoosiers, with wins on courts No. 2 and 3. Michigan State bounced back from a loss in the first doubles match, when Anthony Pero and Josh Mukherjee fell 6-1 to Indiana's Ilya Tirapolsky and Patrick Fletchall. Playing at No. 1, the duo of Jack Winkler and Graydon Lair handed Carson Haskins and Vikash Singh of Indiana a strong 6-1 defeat. It came down to the back-and-forth match at No. 3 to secure the point. After finding themselves down 1-2 to start the match, Nick Williams and Max Sheldon battled through a mostly tied match with Michael Andre and Luka Vukovic. The pair came back from a 5-4 deficit to tie the match 5-5, forcing the match into extra points as the Hoosiers went up 6-5. Indiana's Andrea and Vukovic won the sixth point and the tiebreaker to earn the 7-6 victory.

Luke Baylis, Graydon Lair and Carson Gates all went up for quick 3-0 leads over their Hoosier opponents at No. 3, 4 and 5 singles. Lair was the first off the courts with a singles victory for MSU. He defeated Indiana's Singh 6-2 in the first set and 6-2 again in the second to earn the Spartans their first point of the night and tie the match at 1-1.

At No. 6 singles, Williams was defeated 6-3, 6-2 by Michael Andre to put Indiana back up 2-1. Sheldon fell 6-3, 7-6 to Fletchall after putting up a fight in the second set to force a tiebreaker round.

Gates won his first set with a 6-0 blanking of Indiana's Tirapolsky. His match went into a third-set tiebreaker after Tirapolsky came away with a 6-0 win of his own in the second set. The tiebreaker ended in a 6-4 victory to earn MSU another point.

At the No. 3 court, Baylis fought his way through to a 7-6 tiebreaker victory over Vukovic in his first set. Down 1-2 in the second set, the lead traded as Baylis went up 3-2 midway through. Baylis ended up winning the match by a 6-2 decision in the second set to tie things up at 3-3, the final decision coming down to the No. 1 court.

After being down 1-3 early on, Winkler tied his match before going ahead 4-3 in his first set at No. 1 singles against Haskins. He ended up taking the first set 6-4, and after facing a 4-4 tie in his second set, fell behind two points to give Haskins the second set win, 6-4. In the tiebreaker decision, Winkler fought his way out of a 3-3 tie with Haskins to win the match 6-4 and improve to 12-13 overall in singles play.

Michigan State is back in action this Sunday, April 10 for a home match against Purdue at noon. The match will also serve as a Senior Day celebration for the team's three graduates, Carson Gates, Josh Mukherjee and Jack Winkler. Visit @MSU_MTennis on Twitter the day of the match for updates on indoor/outdoor playing location.

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Team Stats

Players Mentioned

Luke Baylis

Carson Gates

Graydon Lair

Josh Mukherjee

Anthony Pero

Max Sheldon

Nick Williams

Jack Winkler