The #8 Notre Dame Fighting Irish lacrosse (3-0) made quick work of the Marquette Golden Eagles (0-5), 10-3, and used their time on the field well. The Irish wore their now traditional St. Patrick’s day whites with green trim (albeit with their traditional gold helmets, a very good look if you ask us). Tommy McNamara led the team on the field with bagpipes as is the decades-long tradition.
Our views on this game benefitted a lot from a second watch.
The Scoring
We’ll elevate goalie Liam Entenmann to top billing this week. Wow, 18 saves on 21 shots! It would be really hard to improve on that! Everything was clicking for him in the crease today!
Pat Kavanagh continues his incredible offensive output, with a goal and 5 assists, bring his season total to 3 goals and an amazing 18 assists in just 3 games!
Will Yorke had two goals, while Drake, Westlin, Dobson, McCahon, Jackoboice, Mirer and Harris added a goal each. Depth of scoring was off the charts. Westlin, Jackoboice and Hallenbeck added an assist each.
Boyer, Cassidy and Burgmaster topped the ground ball list among field players with 3 each. Jose Boyer also had a Sexton-like 4 caused turnovers, fitting for the player wearing the #46.
The Irish were 1 of 2 man-up, and killed all but one of the 6 Marquette opportunities.
Irish had a manageable 15 turnovers, but 10 came in the second half. More on this later. They also cleared 18 of 20, but this number may flatter the Irish a bit.
Marquette did a good job mucking up the faceoffs, limiting the Irish to 11 of 16. We have to admit, writing 11 of 16 like it’s sub-par feels weird.
35 Irish players saw the field, including freshman Dobson, Parlette, and Burgmaster. Notable absences included graduate student Sean Leahey.
As predicted, Mason Woodward was the pick of the Marquette players with 5 ground balls and a caused turnovers. He’ll be tough to face in the coming years.
The Plot
Gallagher won the opening draw but wasn’t able to cash in making a run for the goal. Freshman Dobson soon after started the scoring with a step-down shot, followed by a nice goal by Kavanagh.
Marquette scored on a short-range shot, but then the Kavanagh show started its main act, with the Irish scoring the next 7 goals, 5 of them assisted by #51. Marquette resigned itself to playing a packed zone to slow the scoring (the Irish are seeing a lot of zone this year).
The Irish went into the half up 9-2 and firmly in control. Westlin scored near the start of the second half, and Notre Dame began a lot of experimentation with personnel and lineups. Scoring stopped completely, but we got to watch a lot of new combinations of players try to work out beating a zone defense, and also watch a lot of new players on defense get meaningful time in. In fairness to the Irish in the second half, the Marquette goalie was having a good day, too.
The second half went by very quickly and without much action other than the Liam Entenmann show, which was more than worth the price of admission.
Our Pregame Questions
As far as our questions are concerned, we look at the Marquette and Cleveland State games as one development project, so these answers are more of a status report. We’ll see where we are after Saturday afternoon. Generally speaking, we thought seeing over 40 players on the scoresheet would be fantastic, under 30 would be a problem. Irish had 35, which is good and reflects the feel of the game.
- Focus: We’re not sure we got a full 6o minutes of focus. A lot of this may be attributable to a comfortable lead and a lot of new players on the field, but turnovers went up as the game went on, clears were less tidy, and scoring went basically to zero. Again, we’ll hold off on our assessment until after Cleveland State.
- Man-Down Defense: Stopping 4 of 5 is great, and the boys generally looked good. A lot of new players involved, which is also good. Kielty had a handful of penalties, the unit wasn’t as sharp with him in the box, and there were a few iffy approaches. But they did look good against a team that has a strong man-up unit. Plus, the Irish counter-attack out of the man-down was excellent. The boys’ stick handling is pure.
- Offensive chemistry: Chemistry among the first units is very good. It’s still a work in progress with the rest of the lineup, but that’s OK. Players like Parlette, Barger, Walker, Buchman, Fay, Morin, Frane, Moss and McGinley saw good minutes. Looks like the team will see a lot of zone this year. The Cleveland State game will be their next opportunity to work things out.
It was a good day at the office overall. Sure, we’d love to see the Irish score 20+, but with things as they are, it was better that they started working on things as soon as they got a comfortable lead instead of running up the score and giving the developing players a few scraps in the last 5 minutes of the game. What is lost in the criticism of the second half output is that even with heavy substitution, the defense gave up only one goal in the second half, too. Not too shabby.
Notre Dame plays Cleveland State this Saturday at 1:00pm at Arlotta, ACCNX. Forecast is for 58 degrees and sun.
#GoIrish
