April 11, 2002
NOTRE DAME, Ind. & MUNCIE, Ind. – The seventh-ranked University of Notre Dame men’s tennis team will try to complete its first undefeated season at home since 1992 when it takes on 16th-ranked Kentucky on Saturday in a match that had its start-time changed to 2:00 p.m. The Irish will then finish their regular-season slate on Sunday with at 1:00 p.m. match at Ball State. Against the Wildcats, the Irish will be trying to win their ninth home match of 2002 to secure the first undefeated campaign at home since the ’92 squad won all seven home matches before advancing to the NCAA final.
LAST WEEK’S ACTION: Notre Dame put together a dominating singles performance last Sunday to register a 6-0 victory over 2001 NCAA semifinalist Southern Methodist. The Mustangs, who were ranked No. 9 in the preseason but had since fallen to No. 41, won three of the first sets in singles, but suffered Irish rallies in each match. The doubles point, which was to have been played after singles, was abandoned due to SMU’s travel arrangements. Sophomore Mattew Scott (Paris, France), as well as seniors Aaron Talarico (Laguna Beach, Calif.) and Javier Taborga (La Paz, Bolivia) each dropped the first set 6-2 before rallying for a three-set victory. Taborga’s win, a 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 triumph over No. 29 Krystian Pfeiffer, marked his seventh this season over a top-30 opponent.
IRISH vs. WILDCATS: Kentucky enters the weekend with a 16-8 overall record and a 5-5 mark in Southeastern-Conference play. The Wildcats will play host to Vanderbilt on Friday before finishing their season a day later against the Irish. Kentucky was ranked 25th in the preseason, but moved all the way up to No. 4 on March 20 before dropping four of five matches and falling to its current listing of 16th. All five Wildcat losses came to teams currently ranked in the national top 30. Kentucky has three wins over teams now listed in the top 10 — a pair of wins over eighth-ranked Tennessee and a victory against No. 4 Mississippi. The Irish and Wildcats have faced four common opponents this season with the Irish splitting the four matches and Kentucky posting a 3-1 mark against them. Both teams lost to No. 1 Georgia, while the Irish also fell to Mississippi.
Four singles players are ranked for Kentucky. Freshman Jesse Witten is No. 8 in the nation after being ranked as high as fourth this spring. He is 26-10, playing mostly at No. 1, and is one of only two freshmen to be ranked in the national top 15 in singles (Baylor’s Benjamin Becker is sixth). In addition, Witten is the second-highest-ranked American in the national singles rankings (Stanford’s K.J. Hippensteel of Stanford, a native of Roanoake, Va., is fifth). Witten has posted a 16-10 mark against players currently ranked and, when he takes the court against 18th-ranked Javier Taborga (La Paz, Bolivia), will be taking on a top-20 player for the 14th time this season (Witten is 6-7 previously). The biggest wins for the Naples, Fla. native have come over seventh-ranked Romain Ambert of Mississippi State and Andy Leber of Texas-Arlington, giving the No. 2-ranked player one of his two losses this season. Also ranked for Kentucky are Karim Benmansour (59th), Gustav Pousette (84th) and Johan Grunditz (94th). Benmansour is 13-11, playing mostly at No. 2, while Pousette is 30-7 with the majority of his matches coming at No. 4 and Grunditz is 10-8, playing mostly at No. 5.
In 2001, Kentucky was 15-15 and ranked as high as 23rd nationally before finishing the season at No. 26. The Wildcats were fifth in the SEC with a 5-6 record. Kentucky advanced to the NCAA tournament for the eighth consecutive year and lost to South Alabama in the second round.
Kentucky is coached by Dennis Emery, who is in his 20th season at the school and has accumulated a 345-220 (.612) mark, is the winningest coach in the program’s history. He is a two-time SEC coach of the year and has guided the Wildcats to 13 NCAA tournament appearances.
The Irish and Wildcats will meet for the 23rd time overall and the 10th consecutive season. The Irish lead the series 12-9-1, but are just 5-6 in the Bob Bayliss era. The teams first met in 1928, a 3-0 Irish win. After Kentucky had taken four straight meetings, Notre Dame has defeated the Wildcats in each of the past two seasons.
A year ago, the Irish traveled to Lexington, Ky. and secured a 4-1 victory. The Irish won the doubles point and three of four completed singles matches to gain the victory. Edo Bawano registered the lone Wildcat victory, while Notre Dame got wins at Nos. 2, 3 and 4 singles.
The Wildcats play in the SEC, which is perhaps the most competitive men’s tennis conference in the nation. At this point, all 12 teams in the league are ranked in the top 55 in the nation. Ten are in the top 30, while seven of the top 20 teams are from the Southeastern Conference.
IRISH vs. CARDINALS: Ball State enters the weekend with a 9-11 record (2-0 in the Mid-American Conference). The Cardinals will travel to defending MAC tournament champion Western Michigan on Saturday for a 1:00 p.m. match before returning home for Sunday’s contest with the Irish. Ball State was ranked 75th in the preseason, but has since fallen out of the national listing. The Cardinals swept a doubleheader to open the season on January 19, but then did not win again until March 9, dropping 10 consecutive matches (though eight of the opponents were nationally ranked at the time of the match). Recently, BSU has had more success, winning seven of its last eight, including four in a row. The only loss in that span was to Michigan, who also defeated the Irish this season. In 2002, the Cardinals are 9-2 against unranked teams and 0-9 vs. opponents ranked at the time of the match. Notre Dame and Ball State have faced nine common opponents this season with the Irish going 8-2 against the teams and the Cardinals losing all nine matches to them.
BSU has no ranked players in singles and doubles, though Jason Pressel, playing No. 1, has been ranked as high as 114th in singles this year. Junior Chris Varga, who has played mostly at No. 2 singles and No. 2 doubles for Ball State, was born in South Bend and is a native of Granger, Ind. He earned first-team all-state honors as a junior and senior at St. Joseph High School, including a 76-match winning streak. Irish senior Jimmy Rogers (South Bend, Ind.) played with Varga at St. Joseph, helping the Indians to the state final in 1997.
In last fall’s Tom Fallon Invitational, a number of Irish and Cardinals players faced off, including a “hidden” dual match consisting of only 10 singles contests. Notre Dame won eight, including five of the top six. Andrew Seni did notch a straight-set win over Aaron Talarico (Laguna Beach, Calif.) for BSU.
In 2001, Ball State was 11-13 and won its 16th MAC regular-season title with a 5-0 league mark. The Cardinals were ranked 50th in the preseason, but fell from the rankings before the end of the year. BSU is coached by Bill Richards, who is in his 30th season at the school. His 447-235 (.656) career record makes him the winningest coach in school and conference history. He is an 11-time recipient of the MAC Coach-of-the-Year award and has led Ball State to 16 league championships and three NCAA tournament appearances.
Ball State and the Irish will meet for the 33rd time. The schools met for the first time in 1970, with Notre Dame winning 8-1, and matched up for 31 consecutive seasons, until last year’s match was cancelled. Notre Dame holds a 27-5 advantage and has won each of the last 12 meetings. Irish head coach Bob Bayliss lost his two initial meetings with BSU before beginning the current streak of dominance. The last meeting between the teams was a 5-2 Irish win at Ball State in 2000.
Notre Dame has had much success against schools from the Mid-American Conference, compiling a 170-34 (.833) mark. In the Bayliss era, the Irish are 34-5 (.871) and have won each of the last 13, dating back to a 4-3 loss to 10th-ranked Miami (Ohio) in 1994.
DOUBLES ALL-AMERICA CANDIDATES: The No. 1 doubles team of seniors Casey Smith (Leawood, Kan.) and Javier Taborga (La Paz, Bolivia) are in the midst of one of the most successful seasons of doubles in school history and are candidates to become just the fourth Irish doubles pair to earn All-America honors. Smith and Taborga are 28-11 and ranked fourth in the nation. Their victory total marks the highest by a doubles team in a season in the Bob Bayliss era (1988-present) and both Smith and Taborga need one more victory to match Andy Zurcher’s (’94) 29 doubles triumphs in 1994 — the most in a season by an individual since Bayliss took over at Notre Dame. The pair is 13-7 in dual-match action and has defeated 10 ranked teams. The Irish have eight wins over top-30 teams, as well as three over teams currently listed in the national top five (#2 Matkowski/Rojer of UCLA, two against #5 Calkins/Delic of Illinois). Smith and Taborga are just the second doubles team in school history to be ranked as high as No. 4 in the nation. David DiLucia and Chuck Coleman, who earned doubles All-America honors in 1991 and 1992, were ranked No. 1 in the nation for a time.
This year’s Irish pair had a strong fall season that vaulted them from their No. 34 preseason ranking into the national top 10, where they have remained all spring. Smith and Taborga advanced through qualifying and posted a 6-1 mark (losing only to No. 1 Lipsky/Martin of Stanford) at the ITA All-American Championships en route to capturing the consolation title. The Irish team reached the semifinals in the Omni Hotels Region IV Championships, which helped them earn an at-large bid to the National Indoor Championships. In that tournament, Smith and Taborga defeated the top-seeded pair of UCLA’s Matkowski/Rojer on their way to losing in a tiebreaker in the semifinals.
HOME IS WHERE THE WINS ARE: The Irish will attempt to complete an undefeated home season with a win over Kentucky on Saturday. Notre Dame is 8-0 in 2002 in the Eck Tennis Pavilion and would go unbeaten at home for the first time since 1992, when the Irish won all seven home contests prior to advancing to the NCAA championship match and finishing the season ranked No. 3 in the nation, the program’s highest-ever listing. Notre Dame’s seniors are 25-7 (.781) in home matches over the past four seasons.
TAKE IT TO THE LIMIT: Notre Dame players have been successful in third sets this season, with the top six players posting a combined 31-10 (.756) mark in three-setters. Over the past four matches, Irish players have posted a 9-1 record in three-set matches. In the Indiana State and SMU matches, there were three tilts decided in three sets and the Irish won all of them in both cases. Senior Javier Taborga (La Paz, Bolivia) has been particularly dominant, winning all eight of his three-set affairs this season.
KEEPING UP WITH NOTRE DAME TENNIS: For the fastest results of Notre Dame tennis matches, call the Notre Dame sports information hotline at (574) 631-3000 and choose #8. The hotline provides schedule and results information for varsity sports and serves as a supplement to the game recaps and weekly releases provided on the official athletic website at www.und.com. The hotline is the first medium updated with the results of each Notre Dame tennis match. In addition, media members may be added to the sports information e-mail release list by contacting Bo Rottenborn at Rottenborn.2@nd.edu, or Chris Masters at masters.5@nd.edu.