USC and UCLA Cruise Into Semifinal Round : Men’s tennis: Trojans exact revenge against Notre Dame, while Bruins breeze past Alabama in the NCAA championships.

USC avenged a loss in last year’s semifinal with a 5-0 victory over Notre Dame and UCLA defeated Alabama, 5-0, in quarterfinal matches of the NCAA men’s tennis championships Sunday at Athens, Ga.

The top-seeded Trojans advanced to the semifinals for the 11th time since the team format was adopted in 1977. USC will face Texas, which upset defending champion and fourth-seeded Stanford, 5-2.

The second-seeded Bruins will meet No. 3 Georgia, a 5-4 winner over Duke, in the other semifinal as UCLA continues its quest to give retiring Coach Glenn Bassett an eighth NCAA title. The Bruins lead the NCAA with 15 championships, but have not won one since 1984.

Although resting its No. 2 singles player, David Ekrot, USC (20-2) lost only one set to the Fighting Irish (18-9).

The Trojans clinched the match when Jon Leach, the son of Coach Dick Leach, defeated Mark Schmidt, 6-1, 6-7 (7-5), 6-1, at No. 3 singles.

USC also got victories from Brian MacPhie, Wayne Black and freshmen Lukas Hovorka and Adam Peterson.

“I’m very surprised (at how easy the win was),” Dick Leach said. “I think our guys remembered last year when they were a little overconfident and lost. Our two freshmen really stepped in today.”

Notre Dame defeated USC, 5-1, in last year’s semifinal, its only victory in 10 matches against the Trojans.

UCLA (24-2) got victories from Sebastien LeBlanc, Jason Sher, Davide Sanguinetti, Matt Quinlan and Darin Pleasant over Alabama (19-5), which was coming off a 5-4 victory over Alabama Birmingham Saturday.

“I don’t know if it was us playing really well or if Alabama was tired,” Bassett said. “I think they could have been emotionally drained because they played such a tough match against an instate rival.”

Alabama Coach John Kreis said his team might have been impacted by the order of play. Because of the length of the Stanford-Texas match, the UCLA-Alabama match began with the bottom three singles matches played first.

“It was unfortunate that we had to start (with four through six) because our one-two-three guys saw what was happening and may have felt a little more pressure,” Kreis said.