Road Test Rolls on as Bulldogs Visit No. 24 Illinois

Friday, January 16 at 6 p.m. CT
Urbana-Champaign, Ill. | Atkins Tennis Center
Match 03
No. 7 Mississippi State at No. 24 Illinois
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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Mississippi State continues its season-opening road swing, traveling for the third of four straight away matches to face No. 24 Illinois.

Friday's match marks Mississippi State's first meeting with Illinois since Matt Roberts' second season at the helm in 2016. Roberts won his lone previous matchup with the Illini and head coach Brad Dancer. Before becoming head coaches, both began their careers as assistants at Michigan State; Dancer from 1993-98 and Roberts from 2010-12.

Mississippi State Notes
• Mississippi State opened the spring with back-to-back wins in Dallas, defeating SMU and Lamar to start the year 2–0.
• Seniors Petar Jovanovic and Benito Sanchez Martinez return as ITA Doubles All-Americans. Jovanovic also earned ITA Singles All-American honors after reaching the quarterfinals of the NCAA Individual Championships.
• Mississippi State reached 25 wins during their 2025 campaign tied with the 1979 team for the most single-season victories in program history.
• The Bulldogs enter the match ranked No. 7 in the ITA preseason rankings, marking their fourth straight season inside the ITA Top 25 to open the year.
• In 2025, Benito Sanchez Martinez set the single season record for the most dual match wins in both singles and doubles.
• As a pair, Jovanovic and Sanchez Martinez are the winningest doubles pair in school history, surpassing Nuno Borges and Strahinja Rakic by nine victories.
• Illinois is Mississippi State's first ranked match of the season. In 2025, the Bulldogs went 12-5 in 17 matches against ranked opponents.
• Mississippi State returns eight letterwinners from last season's NCAA quarterfinal squad.
• Last year the Bulldogs owned the doubles point in dual matches. State won the doubles point in 27 of their 30 matches and had a season-long streak of 17 straight doubles points won from Feb. 2 through April 11. . In SEC play, MSU won the doubles point in 13 of the 14 matches, and both doubles points in the SEC tournament. State opens the 2026 campaign having won five consecutive doubles points dating back to April 18, 2025.
• In Mississippi State's season-opening doubleheader on Saturday, Jan. 10, every Bulldog earned at least one win in singles or doubles.
• Mississippi State is in its 102nd season as a program amassing 1,112 wins, 644 losses, and 8 draws.

Mississippi State Record Book Watch
• Head coach, Matt Roberts is two wins shy of tying Tom Sawyer (1949-68) for second-most career wins all time with 216 victories and nine wins shy of being the winningest head coach in program history, surpassing Andy Jackson's (1989-2001) 220 win total.
• Petar Jovanovic sits at 178 career victories and is a win away from taking sole possession of 2^nd in career wins in program history behind Bulldog legend Nuno Borges' (2019) 189 wins.
• Jovanovic has 86 career doubles wins, tying him with Gregor Ramskogler (2018-2023) for third-most all-time. He sits just 11 wins away from Laurent Miquelard's (1992-95) total of 97.
• Jovanovic currently has 55 career dual match doubles wins. He is just 10 wins away from breaking Gregor Ramskogler's total for the for the most all-time.
• Jovanovic moved into sole possession of 7^th all-time in career dual match wins. He is one win away from being tied for sixth and two wins from fifth.
• Jovanovic is tied for 8^th in career singles wins with Giovanni Oradini (2017-2021) with 94. He is five wins away from jumping to 5^th all-time.

Mississippi State In The ITA Rankings
Team Ranking – 7th
Singles
No. 13 – Petar Jovanovic
No. 34 – Bryan Hernandez Cortes
No. 37 – Mario Martinez Serrano
No. 54 – Benito Sanchez Martinez
No. 125 – Raphael Vaksmann
Doubles
No. 2 - Petar Jovanovic and Benito Sanchez Martinez

Series History vs. Illinois
•State leads the all-time series, 3-2. The Dawgs picked up their first win in 1967 and have won the last two meetings, both in Champaign, Ill.
• The longest winning streak is split between the teams at two apiece.
• Illinois bested the Bulldogs in back to back years in 1997 and 1998, both wins came in the UTSA/ITA National Team Indoors Championship in Lexington, Ky.
• This will be the first meeting between the two programs since 2016, where State defeated the Illini 4-3 in the first round of the NCAA Championship in Champaign, Ill.
• In his tenure as the Head Coach of the Bulldogs, Matt Roberts has never lost to Illinois in his only meeting.

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Road Test Rolls on as Bulldogs Visit No. 24 Illinois

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Players Mentioned

Petar Jovanovic

Benito Sanchez Martinez

Mississippi State University Athletics