Feb. 14, 2002
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – The 18th-ranked University of Notre Dame women’s tennis team will continue its tough schedule, playing host to eighth-ranked Tennessee and #51 Brigham Young this weekend at the Eck Tennis Pavilion. Notre Dame and Tennessee will meet Saturday at 10 a.m., while the Irish and Cougars will face off Monday at 4 p.m. The match against the Volunteers will mark the third top-10 opponent faced by Notre Dame in the last four matches.
NATIONAL TEAM INDOOR RECAP: Notre Dame took part in last weekend’s USTA/ITA National Team Indoor Championships, the premier national team indoor tournament. The Irish have competed in the elite 16-team tournament for nine consecutive years. Notre Dame advanced to the quarterfinals in each of the past two seasons. In this year’s tournament, 14 of the 16 teams were ranked in the top 21 of the ITA national rankings and the field included six of the top seven teams nationally.
Notre Dame was 1-2 in the 2002 Team Indoor Championships. The Irish opened the tournament with a 5-2 upest victory over seventh-ranked USC on Thursday, avenging a home fall exhibition loss to the Women of Troy by the same score. Notre Dame won the doubles point and four of six singles matches to advance to the tournament quarterfinals for the second straight year. Highlighting the victory for Notre Dame were three victories over ranked opponents. Junior Katie Cunha (Mercer Island, Wash.) and freshman Sarah Jane Connelly (Oklahoma City, Okla.), ranked 53rd in doubles, defeated the 24th-ranked team of Anita Loyola and Luana Magnani 8-6 after losing to the pair in the fall. Lindsey Green (El Cajon, Calif.) posted a win over 91st-ranked Loyola in singles, while fellow senior Nina Vaughan (Corona del Mar, Calif.) downed 34th-ranked Magnani 7-6, 6-3. It marked the highest-ranked opponent Vaughan has defeated in her career.
On Friday, Notre Dame fell 5-2 to No. 4 Vanderbilt. The 2001 NCAA finalist Commodores won the doubles point and four of six singles matches to improve to 11-0 this season. Green notched her second win over a ranked opponent in as many days, downing 97th-ranked Kate Burson 6-3, 7-5 at No. 3. Vanderbilt defeated second-ranked Duke 4-1 on Saturday before falling to Stanford in Sunday’s final. The Commodores moved up to No. 2 in the nation in this week’s Omni Hotels Collegiate Tennis Rankings.
In their final match of the tournament, the Irish lost 6-1 to No. 16 North Carolina. The Tar Heels, now ranked 10th, won the doubles point and five of six singles matches to improve to 5-1 (with the only loss coming to second-ranked Duke). Sophomore Alicia Salas (Engelwood, Colo.) provided the only Irish point with a win at No. 5 singles, improving to 8-0 this season in dual matches.
IRISH vs. LADY VOLS: Tennessee is ranked eighth nationally after being listed sixth in the preseason rankings. The Lady Vols are 4-3 in 2002 heading into their match at Michigan on Thursday. Tennessee’s losses have all come to teams currently ranked in the top six in the nation. The Lady Vols fell twice to #6 Wake Forest (4-3 on the road and 6-1 in team indoors) and once to top-ranked Georgia (4-3 in team indoors). Tennessee will conclude its weekend road trip with a match against #29 Indiana in Bloomington, Ind. on Sunday. The Lady Vols boast four ranked singles players and a pair of doubles teams in the top 50. In singles, All-American Alison Ojeda is 16th, Vilmarie Castellvi is 20th, while Kim Gates is 66th and Agnes Wiski is 77th. Ojeda and Crystal Cleveland are 12th in doubles, while Castellvi and Wiski are 45th.
Last season was the best in school history for Tennessee. The Lady Vols finished 25-4 with all three regular-season losses coming to top-10 teams (#3 Duke, #4 Florida and #6 Georgia). Tennessee advanced to the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament before losing to 14th-ranked Washington 4-3. Co-head coaches Mike Patrick and Sonia Hahn-Patrick were honored with the ITA National Coach of the Year award. Tennessee was ranked as high as No. 2 and finished ranked sixth nationally — both program bests.
The Irish and Lady Vols will meet for the 13th time and the ninth time in the past 10 seasons. Tennessee leads the series 8-4 and has won three of the last four meetings. The Irish are 3-5 against the Lady Vols in the Jay Louderback era. Last year, Tennessee defeated Notre Dame 6-1 in Knoxville, Tenn. Notre Dame’s only point came at No. 6 singles where Kimberly Guy gained a victory. The Lady Vols returned their entire starting lineup for 2002.
IRISH vs. COUGARS: Brigham Young is currently ranked 51st after starting the season at No. 35 in the nation. The Cougars are 1-4 this season, but have faced a challenging schedule. Notre Dame will mark the fourth top-25 team faced by BYU in six matches. The Cougars’ lone win came against Air Force, while they lost to #22 South Carolina, #1 Georgia, #42 Wisconsin and #12 Northwestern. Brigham Young will travel to Purdue on Saturday before facing the Irish.
Last season, BYU was 15-8, won the Mountain West Conference and participated in the NCAA tournament, losing 4-2 to #3 Duke in the first round. The Cougars finished 32nd nationally.
The Irish and the Cougars will meet for the ninth time overall and the eighth in the last nine years. Notre Dame has won five of the previous eight meetings, including each of the last three. BYU won the initial meeting in 1991. This will mark only the second trip for the Cougars to Notre Dame. In the only other visit, BYU lost 9-0 in 1999.
HOMELAND SECURITY: The Tennessee match will mark the beginning of a six-match homestand for Notre Dame. The Irish will play a pair of home matches in each of the next three weekends. Thus far this season, the Irish have played just one match on the road (along with four at home and three in the team indoor championships). After this homestand, Notre Dame will have just three home matches in its final 11. The Irish dropped their last two home matches, marking a first since 1997. The loss to Kentucky on Feb. 2 snapped a 12-match home winning streak. Nonetheless, the Irish have won 28 of the past 31 home regular-season matches. Over the past five seasons, Notre Dame is 43-7 (.860) at home. In the Jay Louderback era, the Irish are 111-25 (.816) in the friendly confines of the Courtney Tennis Center and Eck Tennis Pavilion.
AMONG THE NATION’S ELITE: The Irish are ranked 18th in the most recent Omni Hotels Collegiate Tennis Rankings. Notre Dame has now been ranked in the national top 20 in 71 consecutive sets of rankings released by the ITA. After finishing the previous season 21st, the Irish earned a preseason ranking of 16th in the fall of 1997 and have been in the top 20 since then, peaking at a school-record No. 5 midway through last season. Notre Dame has been ranked in the top 20 in 137 of the last 139 polls, dating back to fall 1995.
SUPER SALAS: After not being a regular part of the Irish lineup a season ago, sophomore Alicia Salas (Engelwood, Colo.) has had an outstanding start to 2002. She leads the team in both singles victories and combined victories and has posted a perfect 8-0 mark in dual singles matches, as well as a 5-3 doubles record in dual matches. Salas is 11-0 in her career in singles matches. This season she is 15-3 in singles and has won each of her last 11 matches, as well as 14 of her last 15. In doubles, she and senior Nina Vaughan (Corona del Mar, Calif.) notched an upset victory over Kentucky’s 27th-ranked team of Jill Buckley and Amy Trefethen 8-4. Salas has been particularly dominating at home this season. She is 8-0 in singles and 6-1 in doubles in the Eck Tennis Pavilion. In her seven straight-set singles wins, Salas has lost only 12 games, an average of less than one game lost per set. She also notched a three-set win over Kentucky’s Leigh Bradwell. Last year as a freshman, she lost her first match in the Eck Tennis Pavilion, but has since won all 13 singles matches she has played at home.
DON’T BE SO UPSET: Seniors Nina Vaughan (Corona del Mar, Calif.) and Lindsey Green (El Cajon, Calif.) both notched upset victories in the team indoors. Vaughan downed #34 Luana Magnani of USC 7-6, 6-3, marking the highest-ranked player she has defeated in her career. Green notched back-to-back upsets, downing 91st-ranked Anita Loyola of USC 6-2, 6-3 and #97 Kate Burson of Vanderbilt 6-3, 7-5.
KEEPING UP WITH NOTRE DAME TENNIS: For the fastest results of Notre Dame tennis matches, call the Notre Dame sports information hotline at (219) 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.