Notre Dame Fighting Irish - Official Athletics Website

Need To Know: Monmouth and William & Mary

Feb. 3, 2017

By Joanne Norell

NOTRE DAME, Ind. – The University of Notre Dame men’s tennis team will return to the Eck Tennis Pavilion on Saturday for a day of doubleheader action when the Irish host Monmouth and William & Mary.

Match 5
WHO: Notre Dame (2-2) vs. Monmouth (0-0)
WHERE: Eck Tennis Pavilion | Notre Dame, Ind.
WHEN: 10 a.m. ET Saturday
RESULTS:

Match 6
WHO: Notre Dame (2-2) vs. William & Mary (3-1)
WHERE: Eck Tennis Pavilion | Notre Dame, Ind.
WHEN: 3 p.m. ET Saturday
RESULTS:

On The Hawks

  • Monmouth enters the weekend with a 0-3 record and will compete Friday at DePaul before meeting Notre Dame on Saturday.
  • The Hawks last competed at the NJIT Invitational January 28-29. Their three losses have come against Temple, NC State and Elon.
  • It will be the first meeting between the Irish and Hawks in the series.

On The Tribe

  • William & Mary is 3-1 on the season. The Tribe owns wins over Brown, Boston College and Navy and its only loss came against Yale in the season opener on January 20.
  • The Tribe went 15-9 last season and entered the national Oracle/ITA rankings for the first time since 2011.
  • William & Mary’s Addison Appleby, Damon Niquet and Aidan Talcott each lead the team with 3-1 dual singles records. Talcott is the reigning Colonial Athletic Association Player of the Week.
  • The Irish are 13-2 all time against William & Mary, including 1-0 under Callaghan Family Head Men’s Tennis Coach Ryan Sachire. The Irish last met the Tribe in a 7-0 victory in the 2014 season opener.

Last Time Out

The Irish split the weekend during the ITA Kick-Off last time out at North Carolina. Notre Dame fell to the seventh-ranked Tar Heels in the first round match last Friday, but earned a 4-1 victory over Penn State in Saturday’s consolation match.

Rankings Rundown

Notre Dame is second in the receiving votes category of this week’s Oracle/ITA Division I Men’s Tennis Rankings. The Irish also boast three players in the Oracle/ITA Division I Men’s Tennis Rankings. Seniors Josh Hagar and Eddy Covalschi rank 10th in the national doubles rankings, having gone 13-4 on the season, including 3-1 in dual play this spring. Hagar ranks 27th in the singles poll after the best fall season of his career where he went 9-4 and advanced to the main draw of the ITA All-American Championships, and he is 1-2 at the top of the Irish lineup. Sophomore Alex Lebedev is also ranked in singles, coming in at No. 119 with a 2-1 record at No. 3 singles.

Recruiting Rankings

Notre Dame has been recognized for its excellent recruiting efforts, as the Tennis Recruiting Network has ranked next year’s incoming class as the sixth-best in the country. It is Notre Dame’s third straight top-10 class and the highest-rated among Atlantic Coast Conference teams. The Irish program is also the only one nationally that has brought in a top-nine rated recruiting class in each of the last three years.

Keeping Up With The Irish

All indoor home matches will be streamed live on WatchND. Live scoring will be available for all home tennis matches at UND.com, with links for each match available on the men’s tennis schedule page. Live match updates will also be shared on the team’s Twitter account, @NDMensTennis.

For the latest on all things Irish men’s tennis, follow @NDMensTennis on Twitter and like Notre Dame Men’s Tennis on Facebook.

-ND-

Joanne Norell, athletics communications assistant director at the University of Notre Dame, has been part of the Fighting Irish athletics communications team since 2014 and coordinates communications efforts for the Notre Dame women’s soccer, men’s tennis, women’s tennis and fencing programs. Norell is a 2011 graduate of Purdue University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communication, and earned her master’s degree in sports industry management from Georgetown University in 2013.