Clemson women’s tennis looking for Sweet 16 breakthrough tonight

CLEMSON UNIVERSITY — Almost immediately after Clemson finished its NCAA tournament second-round sweep of North Carolina, the Tigers gathered around coach Nancy Harris and gave her a reminder.

This was good, they said. But not good enough.

For the fifth time in the last six years, they’d qualified for the NCAA women’s tennis Sweet 16. But the Tigers have a nagging sense they need to do more, especially after failing to score a point in Sweet 16 losses the past two years.

“They said, ‘Come on, y’all, we’ve got to do better than the final 16,” Harris said this week. “That was the first thought in their mind.”

Clemson gets its shot at 7 p.m. today when the 12th-seeded Tigers tangle with fifth-seeded Notre Dame in the round of 16 at the NCAA Team Championships in College Station, Texas. The winner will face either Baylor or Stanford Sunday.

“I definitely think they’re focused beyond the 16,” Harris said. “They know they’ve got to get by Notre Dame. They showed they really wanted it. In the second round (a 4-0 win) they showed they really wanted it and it confirmed my belief in how good they are.”

Clemson last moved beyond the Sweet 16 in 2005. In 2007, the Tigers dropped that round 4-0 to Cal, and last season, they dropped a 4-0 decision to Stanford.

The Fighting Irish and Tigers last faced off two years ago in an indoor tournament, with Notre Dame taking a 5-2 decision. But Harris feels her team’s outdoor experience as a warm-weather team could really help tonight.

“We know they’re an indoor team and we like that,” she said. “We get to play more outdoor tennis than they do. We had a little wind here on Saturday and we heard it’s windy at Texas A&M. We’ve played in a few circumstances that are similar, and I think that favors us in being more of an outdoor team.”

Junior Ani Mijacika likes the Tigers’ chances, too.

“It’ll be a pretty good challenge for us to try and move to the round of eight, but the draw is looking really good for us,” she said. “We’re excited to play Notre Dame. Even though they’re high-ranked, I think we have a good chance to show what we have and how good of a team we are.”

Harris hopes the sound beating her team gave North Carolina gives them a serious energy boost; she said it was “important” to rout the Heels as easily as they did.

“We played some of the best tennis we’ve played all season on Saturday, which was wonderful,” she said. “It’s terrific for these youngsters to get rewarded for their hard work because they’ve worked hard all season. We’ve had some difficult times with all of the injuries we’ve had, and worked hard despite some of the things we’ve dealt with. We’ve put ourselves in terrific posture going into the championship.”

Mijacika hopes the magic of the North Carolina rout can return tonight.

“If we carry the momentum from the last match to this match against Notre Dame, I don’t think we’ll have problems with them,” she said. “If we play the way we played last match we should be fine.”

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