Mississippi State Back in NCAA Quarterfinals, Set for Virginia Rematch

Mississippi State is back in the NCAA quarterfinals, and at this point it feels less like a surprise and more like the standard.

The Bulldogs have played their way into the final eight for the second straight season, and now they get another shot at Virginia, the same team that handed them a 4-1 loss back in February at ITA Indoors.

That match wasn’t as lopsided as the score suggests. Mississippi State actually grabbed the doubles point that day, with Petar Jovanovic and Benito Sanchez Martinez winning on court one and Mario Martinez Serrano and Michal Novansky taking court two. The problem was what came next. Virginia took the opening set on all six singles courts and rode that momentum to four straight wins.

A lot has changed since then.

Mississippi State comes into this one after rolling through Tennessee Tech and Wisconsin, then grinding out a 4-1 win over Georgia in the Super Regional.

The Bulldogs have been steady all season, and they’ve done it with depth, experience and a lineup that’s above .500 at every singles spot. That’s not common at this stage of the year.

The headliners are the same ones who have been carrying the program for a while. Sanchez Martinez is still one of the best players in the country, the only one ranked inside the top nine in both singles and doubles. He’s also played 47 straight matches on court one, which tells you everything about how reliable he’s been.

Jovanovic keeps rewriting the record book, breaking the all‑time program wins mark earlier in the tournament and sitting one doubles win away from tying Laurent Miquelard for second-most in school history.

And that’s before you get to the rest of the lineup. Five Bulldogs are in the ITA singles rankings. The team has beaten ranked opponents every time it has won a conference match.

They opened the season with four straight road wins, then earned their way into ITA Indoors by beating Santa Clara and Auburn. This group has been tested from January on.

Virginia will be another one. The Cavaliers reached the quarterfinals by beating Rider, Columbia and South Carolina, and they’ve already shown they can make life difficult for Mississippi State in singles.

But this is a different moment, and the Bulldogs aren’t the same team they were in mid‑February. They’re deeper, more settled and playing with the confidence of a program that expects to be here.

Mississippi State is also chasing a little history. Last year’s team tied the single‑season wins record with 25. This year’s group has a chance to push the program even further, and they’re doing it with eight returning letterwinners and the winningest doubles pair the school has ever had.

The Bulldogs haven’t beaten Virginia before. They’re 0-3 all‑time. But they’ve been checking off a lot of “haven’t done that before” boxes over the last two seasons. Another one wouldn’t be out of character.

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