WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Notre Dame found itself in another ACC dogfight as the Irish took on No. 21 Wake Forest on the road. The Irish found themselves down early and had to battle back to win the match 4-3 with the clinching victory coming down to a third-set tiebreaker.
“It was a great environment -- a great, great match,” Irish head coach Ryan Sachire said. “It was about grittiness. We talk about it all the time. Our doubles wasn’t very competitive, and we need to look at our doubles and figure out what we’re doing wrong. But then we’re down 3-1, and we have three matches in the third set on the court. For our guys to win all three of those matches speaks to our grittiness that we’ve talked about all season, and tonight was a really good example of that.”
As Sachire said, the doubles matches did not go Notre Dame’s way. Pedro Dumont and Jon Ho defeated senior Greg Andrews and sophomore Alex Lawson 8-5 at No. 1 and Romain Bogaerts and Maksim Kan beat freshman Eddy Covalschi and sophomore Quentin Monaghan 8-5 at No. 3.
Notre Dame would have to win four of the six singles matches to claim the match. Covalschi fell quickly in straight sets to Dumont at No. 5 6-0, 7-5, sending the Demon Deacons up 2-0. Then Monaghan put the first Irish point up on the board with a victory against 45th-ranked Adam Lee at No. 2 6-2, 6-2.
Freshman Josh Hagar fell at No. 4 to Ho 6-2, 6-4, putting Wake Forest up 3-1. Remaining on the court were three matches that went into third sets: Andrews at No. 1, senior Ryan Bandy at No. 3 and sophomore Eric Schnurrenberger at No. 6.
Despite being down in his first against Kan set 4-1, Bandy came back to win it 7-5. He dropped a close second set 5-7, but then came back to win his match 7-5, 5-7, 6-2. Andrews also claimed victory in a definitive third set, beating Bogaerts 6-4, 5-7, 6-3.
The match was all tied up at 3-3, and when Schnurrenberger’s third set against Nicky Kunz went to 6-6, the result of the match was resting on a tiebreaker.
Despite getting down 3-1 early in the tiebreak, Schnurrenberger ultimately won his match 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(4).
