April 26, 2018
By Joanne Norell
CARY, N.C. — The 24th-ranked University of Notre Dame men’s tennis team will take its best regular-season Atlantic Coast Conference finish into Friday’s ACC Championship quarterfinal match at Cary Tennis Park, where the fourth-seeded Irish will face No. 12 seed Georgia Tech after a two-round bye.
Match 29
WHAT: ACC Championship Quarterfinal
WHO: No. 4 Notre Dame (17-12, 7-5 ACC) vs. No. 12 Georgia Tech (8-16, 3-10 ACC)
WHERE: Cary, N.C. | Cary Tennis Park
WHEN: 2:30 p.m. ET Friday
LINKS:Championship Central |Bracket |Live Scoring |Twitter
Irish At The ACC Championship
Notre Dame enters the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship as the No. 4 seed, earning a double-bye into Friday’s quarterfinal round. The fourth-place regular-season finish marks the best for the Irish since their first year in the league in 2013-14, when they also finished in fourth place. In that year’s ACC tournament, the Irish advanced to the semifinal, defeating Clemson before falling to eventual champion Virginia. The last time the Irish reached the quarterfinal round was in 2016, when they defeated Duke in the second round and fell to Wake Forest in a tight 4-3 decision.
On The Yellow Jackets
The Irish will meet Georgia Tech for the second time in a week as the Yellow Jackets have won two straight matches to open tournament play. Twelfth-seeded Georgia Tech defeated 13-seed Boston College 4-0 in the lone first-round match of the championship Wednesday before pulling a 4-3 upset on No. 5 Virginia Tech on Thursday. The Yellow Jackets are led in the rankings by No. 61 Carlos Divar in singles and No. 20 Divar and Michael Kay in doubles. The Irish snagged the 5-2 win against the Yellow Jackets last Friday with five singles wins leading Notre Dame to victory.
Last Time Out
Notre Dame wrapped the regular season having won five out of its last six matches, including its last three in a row. On the road to close the slate, the Irish snared a pair of 5-2 victories over Georgia Tech on Friday and Clemson on Sunday. After losing the doubles point to the Yellow Jackets, the Irish sailed through singles with five wins en route to the team victory. In the finale against the Tigers, the Irish won the doubles point and earned four singles victories for a comfortable cushion. The wins helped the Irish improve to 7-5 in conference play and move from seventh to fourth in the ACC standings to earn a double-bye in the ACC Championship.
Rankings Rundown
The Irish came in at No. 24 in this week’s Oracle/ITA Division I Men’s National Team Rankings, up two spots from last week. Junior Alex Lebedev jumped five spots to No. 37, while senior Brendon Kempin and freshman Tristan McCormick came in at No. 55.
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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 men’s tennis and fencing programs, in addition to assisting with football communications and overseeing production of the football Gameday Magazine. Norell is a 2011 graduate of Purdue University and earned her master’s degree from Georgetown University in 2013.