Notes & Quotes: Notre Dame 4, Michigan 3
2/18/2012 12:00:00 AM | Men's Tennis
Feb. 18, 2012
N O T E S
• With today's result, the Wolverines dropped to 44-29 in the all-time series against Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish snapped Michigan's three-match win streak in the series.
• Michigan has claimed the doubles point in 6-of-8 duals this season. The Wolverines boast a combined 15-7 doubles record in dual competitions.
• Evan King and Shaun Bernstein extended their doubles win streak to five straight matches. The duo owns a 6-1 dual record and is 14-4 overall on the season.
• King improved to 2-0 against Notre Dame's Casey Watt. He defeated Watt, 6-2, 6-1 in last season's dual.
Q U O T E S
Michigan Head Coach Bruce Berque
On today's match ... "Notre Dame is a good, deep team from top to bottom. They're older and more experienced than us. Overall, I thought we did a pretty good job. But for us, to have success against these types of teams, we need to be there all the time on every court. The guys fought well for the most part, but I didn't think the guys were necessarily ready to play on every court in singles. There was a lull, and I found myself doing a lot of cheerleading, because we had a bit of a letdown early in singles. They did a nice job fighting back. Evan [King] did a great job in turning it around. He played a smart match and got it down. There were a number of positives, but there were definitely some things we could have done better."
On the doubles play ... "Doubles was good. At No. 2, we were down love-40 in the first game; it was a sloppy start, but fortunately, we were able to dig out that game. They were able to play a pretty good match after that. Michael and Alex kind of hit a rough patch, but it was better. Evan and Shaun played a focused match from the first point to the end.
On his advice to Alex Petrone late in the match ... "I was telling him to work on his feet. When you're in tight situations like that, that's what tends to slow down. He was doing pretty well. He did a great job to fight back. He had been up 40-love in the game that he was broken. He had break points at 15-40, so it was a back-and-forth match. We didn't play well at the end, but he did a great job coming back."
U-M Junior Evan King
On his singles match ... "I stayed confident throughout the match. He played a ridiculous first set, at a really high-quality level, and I just had to do my best to stay out there and weather the storm. His level dropped a little in the second set, and I tweaked my game plan a little bit. I was able to win more points, and he stopped hitting so many winners. It was good. I just stayed focused, didn't panic and came out with the win."
On the Wolverines' fight ... "We're a young team right now. We're going to have to fight and scrap to win every match. We're just going to keep improving. We battle teams like this, ranked around 25, and we'll get better by doing it. By the end of the year, we'll be playing our best tennis."
Players Mentioned
