Borges’ Incredible ITA All-American Run Ends In Final

Monday, October 8

Tulsa, Okla.

All Day

Mississippi State

ITA All-American Championships

MSU's Nuno Borges' incredible run at the 2018 ITA All-American Championships ended in the singles final.

Photo by: Blake Williams/MSU Athletics

Borges’ Incredible ITA All-American Run Ends In Final

October 08, 2018 | Men's Tennis

2018 ITA All-American Championships HQ

by Caleb Garner, Graduate Assistant/Communications

TULSA, Okla. – A superb six-match run ended on Monday morning for Mississippi State's Nuno Borges, as the second-ranked senior dropped a tough 6-0, 7-6(3) decision in the singles final of the ITA All-American Championships.

Borges battled back to force a second-set tiebreaker against Ohio State's 17^th-ranked JJ Wolf, a 9-16 seed, after dropping the first set.

Wolf got off to a fast start, taking the first set 6-0. The Buckeye actually went on an 8-0 run to open the match before the top-seeded Borges held at 40-30 to cut the deficit to 2-1 in the second.

Borges knotted it up at 2-all in the second by breaking back on a deciding point. Wolf and Borges battled back and forth during the set with both sides doing a great job of holding serve to force the set tiebreaker.

The two-time All-American Borges took a quick 2-0 lead in the breaker, before Wolf went on to win seven of the final eight points to take the set and match.

MSU's top ranked doubles pair of Borges and Strahinja Rakic are set to face the seventh-ranked Bulldog tandem of Niclas Braun and Giovanni Oradini in the All-American's doubles consolation final. With both Bulldog duos earning the automatic bid to the ITA National Fall Championships, they have elected to play the doubles consolation final match later this week in Starkville.

By reaching Monday's final, Borges has now advanced to the singles semifinals or better five times at major collegiate events during his illustrious MSU career, the most of any Bulldog ever in singles (Laurent Miquelard did it seven times in doubles, five of those with partner Joc Simmons and two with Daniel Courcol).

Included with this week's finals showing at the ITA All-American, Borges also reached the semifinals of the 2016 ITA National Indoors, the semifinals of both the 2017 and 2018 NCAA Singles Championship, and he won the inaugural Oracle ITA National Fall Championship last autumn (and will defend that title this November).

Next Up For MSU …

Borges is set to play in the main singles draw of the USTA Futures tournament in Harlingen, Texas, that begins Oct. 16. The rest of the Bulldogs will head to Tuscaloosa, Ala., for the ITA Southern Region Championships, held Oct. 17-22 at the University of Alabama.

For more information on the Mississippi State men's tennis program, follow "HailStateMT" on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

MSU at the 2018 ITA All-American Championships
October 8, 2018 – Tulsa, Oklahoma (Michael D. Case Tennis Center)

Singles Main Draw
Final – #17 JJ Wolf [9-16] (Ohio State) def. #2 Nuno Borges [1] (MSU) 6-0, 7-6(3)

ITA National rankings precede player names; tournament seeding in brackets.