Jan. 11, 2001

The 33rd-ranked Notre Dame men’s tennis team opens its 2001 dual-match season at 1:00 p.m. on Friday at the Eck Tennis Pavilion vs. 18th-ranked Minnesota. The Irish return eight of 10 monogram winners from the 2000 team that finished with a 13-11 record and advanced to the NCAA second round — the 10th consecutive NCAA appearance for Notre Dame.

Friday’s match marks the earliest dual-match start in the 79-year history of Irish men’s tennis and the 25th meeting between Notre Dame and Minnesota. The teams will meet for the 15th time since 1990, with the Irish having won eight of the 14 meetings since 1990, while three of the six Gopher wins have come in the NCAA regionals. Eight of the 14 matches have been one-match decisions, including 4-3 matches in the last three meetings.

The youthful Irish will be led by juniors Casey Smith, Javier Taborga, Aaron Talarico and Andrew Laflin, sophomore Brian Farrell and freshmen Luis Haddock-Morales and Matthew Scott. Notre Dame will look to its junior class to replace three-time All-American and four-year No. 1 singles player Ryan Sachire, who graduated from Notre Dame in 2000 after being named the national senior player of the year.

“Last year we were just a bit too young outside of No. 1 singles to measure up to a pretty difficult schedule and maintain the top 20 status that had been our consistent place in the 1990s,” says 14th-year head coach Bob Bayliss. “These were lessons learned last year that will be important to our 2001 season.”

Taborga enters the dual-match season ranked 75th in singles, while Smith stands 95th. Taborga and Talarico begin the dual-match season ranked 38th in doubles after reaching the semifinals of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association All-American Championships in the fall — the first Irish doubles semifinalists in a grand slam event since 1994.

For Minnesota, junior Thomas Haug is ranked 16th in singles and sophomore Harsh Mankad is 53rd in singles.