The Irish will face two top ACC programs on the road this weekend, No. 4 Duke on Friday and No. 14 Wake Forest on Sunday, after a loss to No. 26 Virginia on March 18.
After beating Virginia Tech 5-2 on Friday, Notre Dame (10-4, 2-2 ACC) lost to Virginia 6-1 the next day. Irish head coach Jay Louderback said Virginia (9-4, 4-2 ACC) was a top ACC competitor who controlled the match from early on.
“We needed to for sure win one of the two [against Virginia Tech and Virginia],” Louderback said. “We’d have liked to get two, but we played well. Our doubles … we’ve gotten a lot better as the year has gone on, and I feel a lot more confident in our doubles now. Virginia is a very good team and they showed it [Saturday]. They have big hitters all the way around, and with it being indoors they did a really good job of controlling the match.”
The first two double matches resulted in Virginia’s junior Meghan Kelly and sophomore Rosie Johanson getting a 6-2 win over seniors Brooke Broda and Allison Miller. Irish junior Rachel Chong and sophomore Bess Waldram took a 6-2 win over Cavaliers senior Teodora Radosavljevic and junior Erica Susi. The last doubles match resulted in a Cavaliers win as senior Cassie Mercer and sophomore Chloe Gullickson edged Notre Dame’s freshman Cameron Corse and sophomore Zoe Spence with a score of 6-4.
Jumping into singles, the Cavaliers’ Mercer clinched a 6-2, 6-1 win on court No. 2, Kelly won 6-1, 6-3 over Corse on court No. 3 and Radosavljevic won 6-3, 6-0 over Chong. Virginia continued to sweep when Johanson won at court No. 1, 7-5, 6-2, over Broda. The last two singles were more closely contested, with Cavaliers sophomore Hunter Bleser winning 11-9 in the tiebreakers after splitting the first two sets, 6-2, 5-7. On court No. 4, Spence dropped the first set 4-6, came back 7-5 and won the tiebreaker 10-5 against Gullickson.
With a 10-4 overall record and 2-2 conference record, Notre Dame will hit the road against Duke on Friday at 4 p.m. at the Ambler Tennis Center before taking on Wake Forest at noon Sunday at the Wake Forest Tennis Complex.
“Our big thing is we need a chance to get down there and get outdoors [for practice] Thursday,” Louderback said. “There’s a good chance we’ll be outside, which we’re hoping for. We played well in Florida [outdoors]. We just had three days outdoors and played very good matches. Usually the first time outside we struggle, but it didn’t bother us at all. We’re looking forward to being down there and hoping we get to be outdoors.”
