Notre Dame Upsets USC in Tennis

Notre Dame ended USC’s hopes of a second consecutive NCAA men’s tennis title Monday, upsetting the top-seeded Trojans, 5-1, in a semifinal match of the NCAA men’s tennis tournament at Athens, Ga.

No. 2 Stanford defeated No. 3 UCLA, 5-1, in the other semifinal. Stanford faces Notre Dame today in the final.

USC (21-3) was without Andras Lanyi for the second consecutive day. Lanyi, normally USC’s No. 4 singles player, pulled a muscle in his back warming up before Sunday’s 5-3 victory over Kentucky.

USC was forced to move Wayne Black and Kent Seton, normally the Trojans’ No. 5 and 6 singles players, up one spot in the lineup and use reserve Phil Whitesell at No. 6. Although Seton won his match, both Black and Whitesell lost. For Black, it was his first loss in a dual match this season.

Black, a freshman ranked 50th in the nation in the Volvo Tennis/Collegiate Rankings, had a 4-1 lead in the third set against unranked Will Forsyth, but lost the next five games in a 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 defeat.

Jon Leach, a former Laguna Beach High standout, lost to Chuck Coleman at No. 3 singles, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.

“We knew Notre Dame was a good team,” said Leach, a sophomore who is the son of USC Coach Dick Leach and is ranked 42nd. “Coleman was on top of his game today. I was just a couple shots short of where I expected to be. It may have been more mental than anything. But we had a great year and I’m not going to hang my head about it.”

Notre Dame, among four teams seeded alphabetically between ninth and 12th, is the lowest seeded team to reach the final since the dual match format was introduced in 1977.

USC had led the series, which began in 1971, 6-0, and had also defeated the Fighting Irish (23-3) this fall in a match that did not count on the teams’ records.

UCLA (21-5) was eliminated after watching its top five singles players lose.

“The loss was really disappointing,” UCLA Coach Glenn Bassett said. “This is such a good team that I thought we had a chance to win the championship, if we were ever going to win it. Some times you don’t feel that way, but I definitely thought this was that kind of team.’

The Bruins and the Cardinal (24-3) split two regular-season meetings, each winning at home.

Danielle Scott, an Arizona senior and a former Corona del Mar High standout, saw her collegiate tennis career come to an end with first-round losses in both singles and doubles in the NCAA women’s tournament at Stanford.

“She didn’t make a mistake,” Scott said after a 6-3, 6-2 loss to Stephanie Reece of Indiana. “She was on. I didn’t get a chance to play because she’s a serve-and-volleyer and she aced me so many times and didn’t miss a ball.”

Scott then teamed with Banni Redhair in a 5-7, 7-5, 6-3 loss to Eveline Hamers and Rebecca Jensen of Kansas in doubles.

Scott was ranked ninth in singles and she and Redhair were seeded fourth in doubles.

Debbie Goldberger, a UC Santa Barbara senior and a former Edison High standout, was eliminated from the field when she and Kathy Peterson lost to the top-seeded doubles team, Susan Gilchrist and Vickie Paynter of Texas, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.

UCLA’s Mamie Ceniza won both of her matches in straight sets, advancing to the third round. Cammie Foley and Iwalani McCalla, the other Bruins in the 64-player draw, were both first-round losers.

Both of USC’s singles entrants were eliminated. Petra Schmitt lost a second-round match to top-seeded Shannan McCarthy of Georgia, 6-2, 6-4, after a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Angela Bernal of North Carolina. Maggie Simkova lost to Alix Creek of Arizona, 6-2, 6-1, in the first round.