The Tigers hosted the Alcorn State Braves on Saturday afternoon, starting off the season with some out-of-conference competition. The Tigers swiftly handled business, not dropping a single set on their way to a 7-0 win.
LSU started off last season the same way, defeating the Braves 7-0 and following that victory up with another victory over them, winning 4-0 in a clinch match (a match that concludes once a team reaches four points).
Alcorn State historically hasn’t given LSU much trouble, and to make things easier for the Tigers, they forfeited a point due to the fact that they didn’t have enough players to fill the courts. The Tigers also only had to win one doubles match to obtain the doubles point as opposed to two, which came in the form of a 6-3 victory from LSU’s Malik Bhatnagar and Ben Koch.
Bhatnagar and Koch would then perform well in doubles, with Koch earning the first singles point of the afternoon with a clean, 6-0/6-0 sweep of Alcorn State’s Dakota Fernandez, and Bhatnagar earning the last singles point by winning his match 6-2/6-2.
Bhatnagar stated that nerves were a mild factor in his performance with it being their first competitive play since late fall, but he was very proud of the way he and his teammates handled it.
“A little bit of nerves coming off obviously, but the nerves ended up turning into adrenaline, so it works out well,” Bhatnagar said. “There was great energy, we had a decent turnout of people and all of the guys got it done.”
Ben Koch wasn’t the only player to not drop a game against the Braves in singles, as Boris Kozlov and Joey Thomas also pulled off clean sweeps of their opponents. Thomas was excited about his and his team’s performance.
“In singles, I had a couple goals I wanted to do before and I feel like I met those, and they kept me nice and focused.” Thomas said. “I thought our team was loud today and even though we won pretty comfortably, I think everybody was treating it like it was the US Open for us.”
Thomas had his first full singles match since the surgery on his arm last fall and was surprised that he wasn’t more nervous going into the match. He stated that his arm felt great and it clearly had no effect on his play this afternoon.
“Being gone for a year with COVID and then arm surgery is definitely tough and I wasn’t with my teammates as much in the fall as I would’ve liked,” Thomas said. “I get nervous for matches but for some reason today I never had the nerves I’ve had before, going out there and seeing how the arm was going to feel. It felt good.”
That is one match down, one match to go this weekend, as the Tigers will face off against Alcorn State Sunday morning at 10 a.m. at the LSU Tennis Complex. They will look to finish off their opening weekend without dropping a single set against the Braves.
