March 24, 2006
The No. 27 Georgia Tech men’s tennis team continues its five match road swing, traveling to the state of North Carolina to take on No. 4 Duke and the No. 12 Tar Heels. The Yellow Jackets (6-5, 0-3 ACC) will first face the Blue Devils (9-3, 1-0 ACC) Saturday at 1 p.m. in Durham followed by a meeting at North Carolina (15-1, 0-1 ACC) Sunday at 12 p.m.
Tech enters the weekend having dropped five straight matches, all to teams that are currently in the top-20 of the Fila team rankings.
“Obviously we are in the middle of a very tough stretch of our season and playing excellent teams,” said head coach Kenny Thorne. “Our guys are working extremely hard every day in practice and even though we have had some losses to good teams, we are still focusing on ourselves and showing improvements everytime we step out onto the court and that’s very encouraging as a coach to see.”
The Yellow Jackets trail in the series to Duke, 6-33, including a 7-0 defeat during the 2005 season. Against the Tar Heels, Tech trails in the series, 10-22, but took a 4-3 meeting last season against North Carolina.
“Both of the teams we are facing this weekend are having great seasons,” said Thorne. “The great thing about playing conference schools is that we’ve seen these teams before and our guys know most of the players they are facing. Like I said, it is important for our guys to understand that we are playing well even though our record may not show it. Our guys have great attitudes, are working hard, and our team is headed in a good direction right now.”
