The Blue Devils will round out the regular season with two road matches against conference foes.
No. 8 Duke travels to play Louisville Friday at 4 p.m. at the Bass-Rudd Tennis Center before completing its conference slate against Georgia Tech Sunday at noon in Atlanta at the Ken Byers Tennis Complex. The Blue Devils will use the weekend as one final chance to improve their spot in the ACC standings before heading into the conference tournament the following weekend.
"We just want to finish strong," Duke head coach Ramsey Smith said. "Out of conference we did well on the road. In conference we've played some of the tougher matches—three of the top teams in the country—so we are a good road team, it just happens to be that we have run into some pretty tough teams."
The Blue Devils (20-4, 7-3 in the ACC) suffered a setback in their most recent weekend of play, dropping a 5-2 match to then-No. 16 North Carolina, but rebounded to silence Florida State 7-0 on Senior Day and regain momentum. The win began with a resounding 8-2 doubles win on court three and finished with No. 59 Raphael Hemmeler fighting back from a one-set deficit at the third singles position to extend his win streak to nine matches.
"As we've talked about with the team, it's all about how you bounce back," Smith said. "[We] played one of our better matches against Florida State. They're a really good team, and it just felt like we were hitting on all cylinders with doubles and then in singles everyone was just playing well, so that's the goal moving forward: to have everyone clicking at the same time. If we do that, we're a pretty good team."
Duke's first match will be against a Cardinal squad that had a four-match win streak halted by then-No. 4 Virginia Sunday in Charlottesville, Va. Three of the four victories during that stretch came via 7-0 shutouts. Louisville (23-6, 7-4) is 2-4 against ranked teams this season.
No. 7 Sebastian Stiefelmeyer spent time as the nation's top-ranked player and has not dropped lower than eighth in the national rankings for the Cardinals. The senior rides a seven-game win streak entering Friday's match. Stiefelmeyer will be up against court one against No. 11 Nicolas Alvarez, a Blue Devil freshman who needs just one more win to enter Duke's top 10 chart for freshman victories.
"That match in particular is going to be a really good one," Smith said. "[Stiefelmeyer has] always been a good college player, but he made a huge jump this year, and he's established himself as one of the top players in the country starting in the fall, and it's going to be a great matchup of two really good players, but obviously we're more focused on the overall dual match."
Senior Jason Tahir upset the then-top-ranked Stiefelmeyer Jan. 8 in Honolulu when the teams met at the Rainbow Warrior Classic.
Friday's match will feature two experienced lineups with 10 players total across the two lineups playing in their final eligible season. Duke honored its four—Hemmeler, Tahir, Bruno Semenzato and Chris Mengel—before last weekend's match against the Seminoles, and Louisville will do the same for its six seniors Friday, five of whom play in the starting lineup.
Behind Stiefelmeyer on the top court comes classmate Albert Wagner—ranked 100th nationally—on court two. Junior Alex Gornet—the lone non-senior in the starting lineup—is likely take to court three, followed by seniors Chris Simich, Van Damrongsri and Luis Elizondo at the bottom three singles positions.
The Blue Devils bring plenty of experience to the courts as well, starting Tahir, Hemmeler, Semenzato and Mengel in the middle of the lineup with Alvarez and sophomore T.J. Pura bookending the competing roster.
"It's interesting—it's a nice combo," Smith said. "Nico doesn't act like a freshman, he's a seasoned veteran freshman...but the experience certainly helps, especially this time of year as we get towards postseason play—ACC tournament, NCAA tournament—guys that have been there and experienced a lot of those situations that you can't really talk about with freshmen, but you've really got to go through it."
After facing the Cardinals Friday, the Blue Devils will travel to face the Yellow Jackets in both squads' final regular season contest. Georgia Tech (11-10, 3-7) has a versatile lineup, and most of its starters have played multiple matches at more than one position. The Yellow Jacket squad is led by No. 62 Christopher Eubanks, a freshman who notched the team's only win in a 6-1 loss to then-No. 12 Virginia Tech Sunday to break a personal four-game losing streak in singles play.
This weekend of competition will be the last chance for Duke to improve its standings before tournament seedings are released. Suffering the upset against the Tar Heels did not help the squad in its standings, but the Blue Devils are still in the mix for a first-round bye when the ACC tournament arrives next week.
"We've shown that we can bounce back from tough situations, and I feel like we're playing really well right now," Smith said. "It's just really important to finish strong. We're establishing ACC seeding—that'll get finalized this weekend—so we also want to go into the tournament with some momentum."
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