The Ball State University men's tennis team hosts No. 6 University of Notre Dame 1 p.m. today.-á
Notre Dame dropped to the No. 6 in the national rankings after losing to No. 3 Ohio State University. The Fighting Irish had an 11-match winning streak before losing to Ohio State last week.
"Notre Dame is a really tough team," coach Bill Richards said.
Ball State enters this match after defeating the University of Toledo 5-2 Sunday.
Sunday was the Cardinals' final match on a road trip that included three tournaments and four matches. Today will be the Cardinals' first home match since March 3.
Richards said the road matches were draining and as a result the team had a light practice yesterday in preparation for Notre Dame.
"We just [needed] to recover in practice [yesterday]," Richards said. "[We needed] to get in the training room and get injures taken care of."
Currently it hasn't been announced if the today's match will be played outside or inside because of the cold weather.
During the weekend, the weather resulted in Notre Dame's match being canceled. The Irish have not had a match in nine days.-á
On the other hand, today is Ball State's sixth match in 13 days.-áBecause of the Cardinals' schedule, the team has not had time to talk about Notre Dame, Joe Epkey said.
"We didn't have a lot of time to talk about the match," Epkey said. "[But] we know what we need to do."
During the fall season Ball State played Notre Dame at the Tom Fallon Invitational.-áThe Irish defeated the Cardinals in three of four doubles matches and swept the singles matches.-á
Ball State is 0-2 against nationally ranked teams this season, and Notre Dame is the highest ranked opponent the Cardinals will play this season.
Epkey said playing against nationally ranked opponents raises the Cardinals' level of play. He said these matches are good for the team because they don't affect their conference record.-á
"It's good to throw in a match like this because it's not conference," Epkey said. "Having high level players to play against prepares us more for our biggest conference matches."
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