With the wealth of fierce rivalries the Big Ten has to offer, it isn’t often that a team is forced to look outside the conference for its biggest foe. But this is the case for the Northwestern women’s tennis team, which travels to Notre Dame on Saturday for a match featuring two Sweet 16 teams from a year ago.

The No. 19 Wildcats (12-5, 5-0 Big Ten) return home Sunday to meet No. 49 Iowa.

Last year, NU faced the then-No. 5 Fighting Irish in Evanston. The match came down to Jessica Rush’s No. 6 singles match, which the freshman won in three sets to clinch a 4-3 victory for the Cats. The win was NU’s third of the season over a top-10 team.

“Winning last year gave us so much confidence and enabled us to beat some other teams,” senior Lia Jackson said. “It was a big accomplishment for the whole program.”

Unranked Notre Dame returns four of six players from last year’s squad, but this year’s edition has struggled to an 11-10 record and heads into Saturday’s contest with a three-match losing streak. While the Irish have fallen from their top-10 status of 2001, the Cats are approaching the match with the same intensity as they did last year.

“They were very disappointed to lose to us last year,” head coach Claire Pollard said. “You can throw out the records and the rankings, they’re going to come out and play their best match of the year, and we have to be ready for them.”

Added NU junior Marine Piriou: “We know that there is a pretty sharp rivalry between us, so the atmosphere is going to be very challenging. We want to prove that we’re the best team in the region.”

The Cats are hardly looking past Iowa, which brings a 5-9, 2-2 Big Ten record into the match. NU shut out the Hawkeyes 7-0 last season en route to an undefeated season in the Big Ten.

“We stress in this program that anybody can beat anybody,” Jackson said. “Iowa is a very talented team and they’re definitely going to show up. They think they can beat us.”