Irish Close Regular Season At Michigan, Ball State

April 12, 2000

NOTRE DAME, Ind. – The 29th-ranked Notre Dame men’s tennis team returns to action against 26th-ranked Michigan on Wed., April 12 in a 2:00 p.m. match. The Irish close out the regular season at 49th-ranked Ball State on Sat., April 15. Notre Dame lost 4-3 at 10th-ranked Texas on April 1 in its last match.

THIS WEEK FOR THE IRISH: The Irish head Ann Arbor, Mich., to take on 26th-ranked Michigan on Wed., April 13, in a 2:00 p.m. match. The Wolverines enter the match with a 9-5 record following losses to Indiana and Purdue last weekend. Senior Matt Wright is ranked 68th in singles and 55th in doubles with sophomore Danny McCain. Sophomore Henry Beam has won 20 singles matches for the Wolverines and has a 7-0 record at No. 4 singles. Notre Dame and Michigan will meet the 59th time, with the Wolverines leading the all-time series 39-19. The Irish have beaten Michigan in 10 of the 11 meetings, including a 6-1 victory last year at Notre Dame.

Notre Dame plays its final regular-season match at 49th-ranked Ball State on Sat., April 15. The Cardinals enter the week with a 14-6 record and will travel to Bowling Green before playing host to the Irish. Senior Ryan Baxter and sophomore Jason Pressel are ranked 37th in doubles. Notre Dame has won 26 of 31 meetings with Ball State, including 11 consecutive wins over the Cardinals.

TEXAS REVIEW: The Irish split six singles matches with 10th-ranked Texas but then lost the doubles point to lose to the Longhorns by a 4-3 score for the fifth straight year and for the sixth time in the last seven years. Senior All-American Ryan Sachire and sophomores Casey Smith and Andrew Laflin each won in singles for the Irish. The match was moved from Austin to San Antonio due to rain and was played indoors on four courts. Singles was played first in the event that doubles would not be needed to decide the winner. Sachire beat 68th-ranked Brandon Hawk 6-1, 6-1 at No. 1 singles, while Smith defeated 25th-ranked Michael Blue 6-4, 7-6 (7-2) at No. 3 singles. The Longhorns used wins at No. 2 and 4 singles for a 2-2 tie after the first four singles matches. Laflin then beat Ron Kloppert at No. 6 singles by a 7-5, 6-3 score to give the Irish a 3-2 lead. Texas won the only three-set match when Craig Edmondson rallied for a 6-7 (7-5), 6-2, 6-1 win at No. 5 singles to tie the match at 3-3 and sending it into doubles. At the same time Edmondson was completing his comeback, Sachire and senior Trent Miller beat Hawk and Jorge Haro 9-8 (7-5) at No. 2 doubles to put Notre Dame within one pro-set of its first win over Texas since 1993. The Longhorns rallied once again with 8-6 wins at No. 1 and 3 doubles to win their eight straight over the Irish.

ANOTHER SOLID SEASON FOR SACHIRE: Senior captain and All-American Ryan Sachire stands 10th in the latest ITA singles rankings with a 26-9 record. He leads the team in dual matches with a 13-4 record at No. 1 singles and has won 36 of his last 43 dual singles matches at No. 1 singles. His career record stands at 134-42, while his record in dual singles matches is 73-18. With four more wins, Sachire would become the first Irish player under 13th-year head coach Bob Bayliss to win at least 30 singles matches all four years.

TABORGA, TALARICO CLIMB THE RANKINGS: Sophomores Javier Taborga and Aaron Talarico are ranked 30th in the country, according to the latest ITA rankings. Among their 15 wins are seven victories over ranked opponents against just one loss. The pair has a 10-5 mark at No. 1 doubles in 2000 and an overall record of 15-7. Their highest ranked win of the season came against Illinois’ ninth-ranked Jeff Laski and Jamal Parker. The two sophomores are third-youngest of the top 30 teams in the rankings, with USC’s sixth-ranked sophomores Ryan Moore and Nic Rainey — 9-8 (12-10) winners over Taborga and Talarico in the fall — and Georgia’s 20th-ranked freshman Matias Boeker and sophomores Travis Parrott as the two teams of only freshmen and sophomores ranked ahead of them. Taborga and Talarico played just six matches together as freshmen and went 3-3. They beat Baylor’s David Hodge and Johan Jooste — ranked 11th at the time — in their first match together last season.

LAFLIN CLINCHES WINS: Sophomore Andrew Laflin has won the clinching singles matches in five of Notre Dame’s nine wins during the spring season, including decisive matches against Purdue and Northwestern in one weekend. Most recently he helped the Irish beat UAB 5-2 with his 1-6, 7-6 (7-4), 1-0 (11-9) after trailing 2-5 in the second and 3-8 in the match tiebreaker. He also won decisive matches in the 4-3 win over Ohio State and against Michigan State. His record of 17-12 includes wins in the fall over USC’s Nicholas Rainey and Wisconsin’s Danny Westerman and Scott Rutherford.

SMITH NETS RANKED WIN: Sophomore Casey Smith helped the Irish to a split of singles matches against 10th-ranked Texas with a 6-4, 7-6 (7-2) win over 25th-ranked Longhorn Michael Blue, marking the highest-ranked opponent Smith has beaten in his collegiate career.

MILLER AND SACHIRE IN DOUBLES: The senior team of Trent Miller and Ryan Sachire at No. 2 doubles have compiled a 12-8 record in doubles this year with wins in 10 of their last 13 matches. Miller and Sachire — after a 14-6 record at No. 2 doubles as freshmen — posted wins over Virginia’s 46th-ranked Corker and Winter and Illinois’ 12th-ranked Laski and Parker in their recent wins.

FARRELL FILLS IN: Freshman Brian Farrell, after a 5-1 record in the fall, has subbed in and out of the dual-match singles lineup in 2000 and compiled a 6-4 record at No. 6 singles. In his second appearance with the Irish leading 18th-ranked Kentucky 3-0 but with the three other singles matches to be decided in third sets, Farrell abruptly ended any suspense about the outcome of the match with a 6-2, 7-6 win over Reven Stephens at No. 6 singles. In Notre Dame’s win over 26th-ranked Virginia, Farrell — in his first action in 18 days — won the clinching match in the 4-2 victory when he defeated Robert Abendroth 6-3, 6-4. His record in tiebreaker stands at a team-leading 7-0 in the 15 matches he has played.

ITA RANKINGS: The Irish stand 29th among the 75 teams ranked by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association after finishing 1999 ranked 31st. Senior All-American Ryan Sachire is ranked 10th in singles. Sophomores Javier Taborga and Aaron Talarico are ranked 30th in doubles.

MALHAME JOINS CLASSMATES: James Malhame has joined his fellow classmates in taking his place in Notre Dame’s sophomore-dominated lineup. He has played at No. 3 doubles in 14 of the team’s 17 dual matches in 2000 with both Casey Smith and Ashok Raju. Malhame and Smith have a 7-6 record in 2000 — highlighted by an 8-5 win over Edo Bawono and Johan Grunditz to clinch the doubles point against Kentucky. The pair went 3-0 at the Blue-Gray National Classic, helping the Irish win the doubles point against Virginia, Illinois and UAB. Malhame and Raju have played once in 2000, losing a tiebreaker against Purdue.

2000 IRISH SLATE: After matches against 15 ranked teams thus far in the season, the Irish are scheduled to meet at least two more ranked teams. Notre Dame finished tied for fifth its annual trip to Montgomery, Ala., for the prestigious Blue-Gray Classic. Notre Dame will defend its 1999 BIG EAST championship April 20-23, at Miami.

HEAD COACH BOB BAYLISS: Irish head coach Bob Bayliss is in his 13th year as head coach of the Irish, compiling a 240-111 (.684) record at Notre Dame and a career mark of 522-204 (.719), the fifth-best winning percentage among active men’s coaches. Bayliss became the 11th active men’s tennis coach to record 500 career wins on Feb. 20, 1999. He has guided the Irish to NCAA championship appearances in each of the last nine years, including an NCAA second-place finish in 1992. The Richmond, Va., native, and 1966 graduate of Richmond has been named ITA national coach of the year in 1992 and ITA regional coach of the year three times. The six-time conference coach of year has coached his players to 13 All-America honors in his 12 years at Notre Dame, with senior Ryan Sachire his latest All-American.

IRISH INK HADDOCK: Luis Haddock, ranked 20th by the United States Tennis Association among 18-and-under boys, has signed a national letter of intent to attend Notre Dame in the fall of 2000. The Caguas, Puerto Rico, native also was ranked third in the country last year in doubles. Haddock looks to become the second men’s tennis monogram winner to come to Notre Dame from Puerto Rico. Pedro Rossell^~, the current governor of Puerto Rico, played for the Irish from 1963-66, captaining the ’66 team that finished 15-0. Haddock is a senior at Colegio Cat^~lico Notre Dame, where he is ranked first in his class with a 4.0 cumulative grade-point average.

Intercollegiate Tennis Association Rankings