With their regular seasons in the books, the Notre Dame men’s and women’s tennis teams ramp up postseason play this week. The Irish will compete in the ACC Championships at the Cary Tennis Park in Cary, North Carolina.
The Notre Dame men’s team, which finished the regular season at 13-13 overall and 4-8 within the ACC, will take on Clemson on Thursday morning. Meanwhile, the seventh-seeded women’s team will battle Syracuse on Thursday night after going 16-8 overall and 7-6 within the conference. Both teams seek their first advancements in the ACC Championships in five years.
Irish men bring quality play into Clemson match
Since a winless trip to North Carolina and Duke ended March and dropped the Irish to 10-12, the Notre Dame men’s team has risen up. The Irish are 3-1 in April with convincing victories over Clemson, No. 46 Louisville and Boston College. Notre Dame’s one loss, a 4-3 defeat to No. 35 Georgia Tech, still played a role in solidifying the team’s competitive level.
After finishing at .500 overall and with four ACC wins, the Irish will meet back up with the Clemson team that started their recent hot streak. Notre Dame enters as the No. 8 seed, while Clemson holds the No. 9 seed. The Irish and Tigers will play Thursday at 10 a.m. for the right to face top-seeded Virginia, who does not have a conference loss this year.
Though Notre Dame has not advanced in the ACC Championships since 2019, facing Clemson gives the Irish a good chance to win. They have defeated the Tigers in seven consecutive meetings dating back to 2017.
That streak includes a 4-1 Irish win less than two weeks ago on April 5 in South Bend. In that matchup, Clemson actually won more games than Notre Dame in doubles play but lost two out of the three matches. The Irish then made much easier work of singles play after conceding the No. 4 match to Clemson.
Nationally, Notre Dame and Clemson rank closely at No. 47 and No. 54, respectively, in the ITA Collegiate Tennis Rankings. The top Irish doubles team of sophomore Sebastian Dominko and senior Jean-Marc Malkowski currently rates eighth in the country, while Clemson’s pair of Maxwell Smith and Noa Vukadin ranks 55th. In singles play, Dominko ranks 40th for the Irish, with Ryuhei Azuma (95th) and Wissam Abderrahman (102nd) of the Tigers also positioning inside the top 125.
Looking at the rest of the tournament field, No. 1 Virginia (19-4, 11-0 ACC) enters the postseason with 11 consecutive wins. Wake Forest (25-5, 10-2) and NC State (17-5, 10-2) occupy the second and third positions, respectively, with the Wolfpack having won five straight matches. Fourth-seeded Duke (17-8, 9-3), the final team with a two-day bye, has won six of its last seven matchups.
Recently-tested Irish women to square with off with Syracuse
Over the last month, the Notre Dame women’s tennis team has seen no shortage of stiff competition. And the Irish largely responded well to their many tests down the home stretch of the season.
Through March 3, Notre Dame was off to an 0-5 start against ranked opponents and held a 1-3 record in ACC play. Since then, the Irish have gone 7-3 with six conference wins, posting a 5-3 mark against teams in the national top 75.
The Irish women carry that momentum into the ACC Championships, where they will also face the team they previously played on April 5 — Syracuse. Notre Dame enters the matchup as the No. 7 seed, while the Orange own the No. 10 position. The two will compete Thursday at 6 p.m. the right to advance and face No. 2 Virginia in the quarterfinals.
Two Fridays ago, when Notre Dame ranked 33rd in the country and Syracuse ranked 49th, the Irish dropped the Orange by a 5-2 score in central New York. Syracuse competed well in doubles play, taking the deciding No. 3 matchup to a tiebreaker before conceding the doubles point. In singles play, senior Julia Andreach stole the show for the Irish, defeating Miyuka Kimoto (6-0, 6-1) in a ranked No. 1 singles match.
Notre Dame’s national ranking of 28th more widely clears Syracuse’s No. 56 spot on the ITA list. Both programs have a doubles team inside the top 50, as Viktoriya Kanapatskaya and Miyuka Kimoto of the Orange rank 40th, and Andreach and graduate student Page Freeman rank 42nd for the Irish. As singles players, Andreach (No. 27) and Kimoto (No. 48) also rank inside the nationwide top 50.
On the women’s side, North Carolina (17-3, 10-1 ACC) tops the seeding chart and owns the best game differential in the conference at 93-22. Right up there with the Tar Heels, No. 2 Virginia (18-3, 10-1), No. 3 Florida State (15-6, 9-3) and No. 4 Miami (10-6, 8-3) round out the group of teams with byes to the quarterfinals. The Seminoles come in especially hot with an eight-game win streak.
Like the men, Notre Dame’s women’s team has recently struggled to win its first game in the ACC Championships. The Irish went one-and-done in 2021, 2022 and 2023, also going without a conference tournament win since 2019.
