No. 33 Irish cruise past Badgers
By RACHEL BIBER
Sports Writer
The Irish men's tennis team may have worn the visiting colors for its match against the Wisconsin Badgers on Sunday, but they played like they were right at home.
Thirty-third-ranked Notre Dame cruised to its second win of the season, sweeping the doubles matches and dropping only one singles match to the Badgers, while extending an impressive winning start to the 2001 season.
"I think that it was a good day," the 75th-ranked Irish junior Javier Taborga said. "We all knew that last year was a bad year on the road, and that we had to start playing better. I think everyone was very focused and basically we knew we were better than them and we wanted to show them from the beginning that we were going to dominate and not give them any chances."
Led by 95th-ranked Casey Smith at No. 1 singles, Notre Dame gave Wisconsin no opportunities for an upset. Smith downed the Badger's Danny Westerman 6-4, 6-4, while Taborga raced past Wisconsin's Dustin Friedman 6-0, 6-2, in the No. 2 singles position. The Irish also garnered wins from Luis Haddock-Morales, Aaron Talarico and Matt Scott, in the respective third, fourth and fifth singles positions.
Dustin Traylor won the Badgers' only match, defeating Brian Farrell in a fiece third-set tiebreaker, 11-9.
Being on the road is usually difficult for the Irish, but the intensity they played with supplied an extra boast, Smith said.
"I think individually I played pretty well," Smith said. "I got in a groove on their courts. It's always tough playing on the road, because every court is different, the lighting is different, the actual court is different, and the people you are playing are different. I felt pretty good, I felt confident out there, and also the team was playing really well, and when you are able to look around and see everyone hitting the ball well and winning it's obviously a big boast emotionally for yourself."
The intensity was not lacking for Notre Dame in the doubles portion of the match either, as the Irish convincingly captured the doubles point. Taborga and Talarico, ranked 38th in the nation, knocked off the Badger's duo of Westerman and Friedman, 8-4, at No. 1 doubles, while the pairing of Smith and Haddock-Morales defeated Wisconsin's Stefan Reist and Scott Rutherford, 8-5, in the No. 2 doubles match. Andrew Laflin and Farrell also picked up a win in doubles for the Irish by beating the Badger duo of Scott Green and Jason Gonzaga, 8-5.
Despite the dominating doubles performance by the Irish, the team knows it still needs to work on a few aspects of its game.
"We can improve a lot, especially in doubles we haven't been playing as good as we can," Taborga said. "I think the teams we've played so far didn't challenge as much as other teams are going to, and I think we are going to have to work hard in doubles."
Initiating the match-up against the Badgers with a vengeance in the doubles portion of the match enabled the Irish to set a dominating tone throughout the day's competition, helping the team put another win in the books.
With two wins recorded and many more matches ahead, Notre Dame knows they have plenty to work on and do not plan on fooling around.
"I think that we are playing well for this point of the season, but I think we have a long way to go," Smith said. "I think that we have a lot of potential on this team and if we could just keep on improving and keep on working on some of the things we need to, I think we could be a very, very good team."
All Sports Stories for Tuesday, January 23, 2001
