Notre Dame Fighting Irish - Official Athletics Website

Men's Tennis Hosts Purdue, Travels To Northwestern

Feb. 24, 2000

NOTRE DAME, Ind. – The 33rd-ranked Notre Dame men’s tennis team concludes its six-match homestand by welcoming 61st-ranked Purdue to the Eck Tennis Pavilion before traveling to Northwestern. The Irish defeated Wisconsin last week before falling to Miami (Fla.) at home.

THIS WEEK FOR THE IRISH
Notre Dame welcomes 61st-ranked Purdue to the Eck Tennis Pavilion for a noon match on Sat., Feb. 26. The Boilermakers enter the week with a 3-3 record following a 5-2 win over Northwestern. Notre Dame leads the all-time series with Purdue 39-8 and has won the last nine meetings, including a memorable 4-3 win a year ago in West Lafayette, Ind. Notre Dame rallied from a 0-3 deficit to beat 47th-ranked Purdue 4-3. After losing the doubles point and the first two singles matches, the Irish won four straight three-set matches, including a sweep of the top three singles spots. Andy Warford then completed Notre Dame’s comeback with a dramatic 6-1, 5-7, 7-6 victory over Derek Miller at No. 6 singles in the last match on the court.

The Irish head to Northwestern on Sun., Feb. 27, for a 12:00 p.m. match against the Wildcats, who enter the week with a 3-5 record before playing Western Michigan on Saturday. The Irish have won seven of the last nine meetings between the teams, including a 7-0 win last year that marked the 500th career win for head coach Bob Bayliss.

MILLER FAMILY REUNION
Notre Dame’s match against Purdue will pit Irish senior Trent Miller (San Diego, Calif.) against his brother Derek, a sophomore for the Boilermakers. Trent Miller has played at No. 2 doubles for the Irish with senior Ryan Sachire (Canfield, Ohio), and the pair has compiled a 5-6 record and a 4-3 mark in dual matches. The younger Miller has played at No. 2 singles and No. 3 doubles for the Boilermakers.

SACHIRE HEATS UP
Senior All-American Ryan Sachire enters the weekend without the loss of a set in his last four matches. Since losing to eventual champion Daniel Andersson of VCU in the quarterfinals of the Rolex National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships, the Irish captain has improved to 20-6 this season in singles with his four victories. His career record stands at 128-39 entering the week, while his record in dual singles matches is 67-15. He has a 5-0 record in three-set matches this year and a 17-0 mark when winning the first set.

TABORGA, TALARICO TOUGH AT NO. 1
Sophomores Javier Taborga (La Paz, Bolivia) and Aaron Talarico (Laguna Beach, Calif.) have given the Irish a talented No. 1 doubles team during the dual-match season and have a 10-5 record overall. The pair has won four of six matches in 2000, with three of the wins coming over ranked teams, including an 8-5 win over 14th-ranked team of Matt Amgwerd and Nic Dubey from New Mexico in January. Their last two wins have come against a pair of regional teams in Ohio State and Wisconsin that are ranked nationally. The sophomore pair played just six matches together as freshmen and went 3-3. The beat Baylor’s David Hodge and Johan Jooste — who were ranked 11th at the time — in their first match together last season.

RECAPPING THE WEEK:
Notre Dame won the doubles point and then won six singles matches in straight sets — including three second-set tiebreakers — to beat Wisconsin 7-0 for its ninth consecutive win over the Badgers. Javier Taborga teamed with Aaron Talarico to win the clinching doubles match and then won at No. 3 singles claim the decisive fourth point of the match. Sophomores Andrew Laflin (Tampa, Fla.), Casey Smith (Leawood, Kan.) and Talarico, senior Ryan Sachire and freshman Brian Farrell (Lilburn, Ga.) also posted singles wins in the victory.

The Irish lost the doubles point and won just two singles matches in falling 5-2 to 32nd-ranked Miami (Fla.) on Sunday at the Eck Tennis Pavilion. Senior All-American Ryan Sachire and sophomore Andrew Laflin each won in singles for Notre Dame’s two points. The loss snapped a four-match winning streak for the Irish and a two-match winning streak against the Hurricanes after a 5-2 win last March and a 4-3 win in the BIG EAST championship match in April.

FARRELL FINISHES
Freshman Brian Farrell, after a 5-1 record in the fall, recently stepped into the dual-match singles lineup for this first time and won his first two matches in straight sets. He began with a 6-3, 6-2 win against Michigan State in the 7-0 Irish victory. 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. After losing a match on Stephens’ serve at 5-6, Farrell calmly rolled to a 7-2 win in the tiebreaker, improving his record in tiebreakers to a team-leading 5-0. After losing in three sets against Ohio State after the match had been won by the Irish, Farrell rebounded for another straight sets win against Wisconsin to improve to 8-2.

ITA RANKINGS
The Irish stand 33rd among the 75 teams ranked by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association after finishing 1999 ranked 31st. Senior All-American Ryan Sachire is ranked 17th in singles, while sophomores Javier Taborga and Aaron Talarico are ranked 53rd in doubles.

2000 IRISH SLATE
After matches against seven ranked teams to open the season, the Irish are scheduled to meet at least seven more ranked teams, including matches at third-ranked Duke, eighth-ranked Illinois and 20th-ranked Texas. Notre Dame also will make 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 236-106 (.690) record at Notre Dame and a career mark of 519-200 (.722), 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.

LAFLIN FINDS GROOVE
Sophomore Andrew Laflin — who won 11 consecutive matches at the start of the 1999 dual match season — finds himself beginning a similar streak a year later after three consecutive victories. After losing a match tiebreaker to Kentucky’s Gustav Pousette, Laflin has posted wins over Ohio State and Wisconsin before recording Notre Dame’s only 6-0, 6-0 win this season against Miami’s Mark Arrowsmith. With a 7-6, 6-0 win over Wisconsin’s Stefan Reist coming before the Miami match, Laflin enters the week with three consecutive 6-0 sets. His record of 12-8 includes wins in the fall over USC’s Nicholas Rainey and Wisconsin’s Danny Westerman and Scott Rutherford.

1999 FALL REVIEW
As the top combined women’s and men’s tennis programs in the Midwest, Notre Dame was selected to play in the inaugural WingspanBank.com/WORLD TEAM TENNIS National Collegiate Championships held Oct. 1-3, at Stanford. The event, sponsored by Billie Jean King’s WORLD TEAM TENNIS organization, featured sets of men’s and women’s singles and doubles and mixed doubles. The Irish team of Trent Miller, Ryan Sachire, Michelle Dasso and Kelly Zalinski finished sixth out of the 16 invited teams. Notre Dame opened with a 30-12 win over Illinois before falling 26-24 to South Carolina. The Irish beat Tennessee 29-19 in the consolation round before losing 28-20 to third-seeded Mississippi.

The Irish wrapped up the fall season with strong showings in a number of fall events. Notre Dame’s top seven players finished with a 23-13 singles record against regional opponents, while five different players beat opponents ranked in the preseason Intercollegiate Tennis Association rankings. Notre Dame combined for a 7-6 singles record against ranked players. The Irish fall season culminated in one of their best all-around showings at the ITA Region IV Singles Championships.

Notre Dame was one of only four schools — with Michigan, Michigan State and Minnesota joining the Irish — to have more than one player advance to the round of 16 and the only school to have three players reach the fourth round. Ryan Sachire and Javier Taborga, who beat three seeded players in his four wins, each won in the fourth round to set up an all-Irish quarterfinal, as Notre Dame was the only school with more than one quarterfinalist.

Individually for the Irish, Sachire reach the semifinals of the T. Rowe Price National Clay Court Championship and the ITA Region IV Singles Championships as the top seed. Smith posted wins over Illinois’ 84th-ranked Jeff Laski and beat eventual ITA Region IV Singles Championships finalist Brad Erickson of Northwestern at the Tom Fallon Invitational. Taborga, who played just four dual matches at No. 6 singles last year, beat Indiana’s Ian Aarons and Minnesota’s Tyson Parry at the ITA Region IV Singles Championships after narrowly losing 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 to USC’s Ryan Moore at No. 3 singles. Laflin posted wins over Wisconsin’s Danny Westerman and USC’s Nick Rainey. Talarico went 8-2 with a straight set win against USC.

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.

This Rank Last Week School Points
1. 1. LSU 597
2. 2. Stanford 594
3. 3. Duke * 585
4. 4. Florida 576
5. 5. Mississippi 568
6. 7. Pepperdine 558
7. 8. UCLA 548
8. 8. Illinois * 537
9. 10. VCU 534
10. 20. Texas * 533
11. 6. SMU 521
12. 11. Baylor 520
13. 12. Mississippi State 499
14. 13. Tennessee 492
15. 14. TCU 490
16. 16. Georgia 487
17. 17. Fresno State 471
18. 18. Texas A&M 469
19. 19. USC 452
20. 21. Virginia 448
21. 23. Minnesota 426
22. 24. Auburn 421
23. 25. Harvard 418
24. 26. Kentucky * 417
25. 14. South Carolina 409
33. 29. Notre Dame 353

* indicates Notre Dame opponents

Other Notre Dame opponents

This Rank Last Week School Points
26. 19. Kentucky 390
27. 28. Michigan 381
28. 32. Miami (Fla.) 379
30. 30. Washington 368
32. 33. Indiana 357
44. 43. Ball State 264
47. 48. North Carolina 218
48. 49. Ohio State 215
53. 54. New Mexico 155
61. 59. Purdue 127

Starters Returning

Matt Daly (Jr.) Andrew Laflin (So.)
Trent Miller (Sr.) Ryan Sachire (Sr.)
Casey Smith (So.) Javier Taborga (So.)

Monogram Winners Ret./Lost
7/2

1999-2000 Captain
Ryan Sachire

1998-99 Record
17-8

1999 BIG EAST Championship
3-0, champion
Notre Dame 4, Rutgers 0
Notre Dame 4, Boston College 0
Notre Dame 4, Miami 3

1999 NCAA Championship
0-1, first round
Harvard 4, Notre Dame 2