The Irish won two out of three matches over the weekend to stay undefeated in Big East play.
Friday, No. 3 Notre Dame (19-4, 3-0) topped DePaul 5-2 and Sunday it swept Marquette 7-0. In between the two Big East victories, Notre Dame dropped a closely contested match to top-ranked Northwestern 4-3 Saturday.
As is usually indicative of the team's success, Notre Dame won the doubles point in both victorious matches this weekend, and lost it against Northwestern. In fact, against the Big East competition, Notre Dame swept all three doubles matches. Against Northwestern, only the top Irish duo, the third-ranked combination of senior Kelcy Tefft and freshmen Kristy Frilling, managed a doubles victory as they defeated the No. 14 pairing of Georgia Rose and Lauren Lui 8-3.
"We have three very strong doubles teams," Tefft said. "Although we have won most of our doubles points, we are not yet playing to our potential. We should win all of our doubles points. If we could have gotten the doubles point on Saturday it would have been a much different story for us."
Against DePaul, the Irish earned four singles victories. Tefft, juniors Kali Krisik and Cosmina Ciobanu and freshmen Shannon Mathews all were victorious in their matches. Against Northwestern, Krisk and Mathews maintained their perfect weekends, while No. 36 Frilling pulled out an upset over No. 20 Rose.
"Kristy played very well against Northwestern," Tefft said. "She lost to Rose in February and has been working on the things that she needed to be a player like Rose ever since then."
The Irish had lost to Northwestern once earlier this year, 4-1, at the National Indoor semifinals. Saturday's match was much closer, even though it was in Evanston, Ill.
"We have changed our lineup around some since February which helped make the match closer," Tefft said. "Next time we play them we really could beat them."
In the Marquette match, not only did the Irish sweep the doubles point, but the team dominated in the singles matches as well. Notre Dame won all six matches, as no Irish player gave up more than five points en route to victory. The closest matches were those of Frilling and sophomore Kristen Rafael, each ending 6-2, 6-3.
