#3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse (10-2, 4-2 ACC) toyed with the #10/#17 North Carolina Tar Heels (7-7, 1-5 ACC), 18-9.  The boys made their final case for the NCAA committee and await the selection show Sunday at 9:30 ESPNU.

Plot and Scoring

We are keeping it brief so we can start focusing on the tournament:

Burgmaster and Tevlin led the lads onto the field with a new wrinkle, an Amazing Grace intro before the traditional Scotland the Brave.  After this there probably shouldn’t have been the slightest doubt the boys would prevail.

Ricciardelli opened the scoring in the first minute of the game, man-up, on and assist from PKav.  Dobson followed with the second Irish goal two minutes later. Taylor and Tevlin extended the lead to four.

North Carolina then went on a 3-goal run to make things appear interesting for a moment, but the boys responded with a 6-goal run and made clear they had no intention of letting UNC make this game competitive.  The defense was dominant and the offense sharp.

Notre Dame started substituting new combinations in the third quarter, and made wholesale substitutions midway through the fourth. North Carolina is a good team, but the 18-9 final doesn’t adequately express the Irish dominance.

PKav had a goal and 6 assists (and 4 more GBs!), and his brother had 5 goals and an assist.  Taylor and Dobson had hatricks.  Riciardelli had 2 goals, and Burgmaster (pole/bagpiper goal!), Ramsey, Will Lynch, and Tevlin added a goal each.

On the defensive end, Entenmann had 11 saves.  Ben Ramsey was stellar with 3 caused turnovers and 4 ground balls.  Napolitano and Tevlin had very good days as well with 2 caused turnovers each.

The boys were careful with the ball with only 12 turnovers and 25 of 27 clearing.

34 Notre Dame players saw the field.

Our Pregame Questions

The team answered these about as well as we could hope.

  1. No Injuries: As best we can tell, the Irish were unscathed, with the the starters getting a rest by the early 4th quarter.
  2. Another week of defensive dominance: There was a point in the game where CKav was beating UNC on his own, and UNC only scored their 5th goal in the waning minutes of the 3rd quarter. The defense was as dialed in as we’ve seen them this season.
  3. Flair on offense: They were loose and aggressive. The ball was moving beautifully and they probably could have picked whatever final score they wanted. There came a point where the shot selection started to get a bit silly, but we aren’t complaining. We asked for flair, we got flair.

Overall, this was a close to an ideal momentum game going into the tournament. A convincing win against a conference rival, on the road, was a nice bow on their tournament case.

Selection Sunday

After last year, who knows what to expect, but there is a consensus that the top-3 ACC school (ND, Duke, UVa) will be the top-3 seeds in some order.  Beyond this it is anyone’s guess.  The 4th, 5th and 6th ranked teams lost early in their conference tournaments. Michigan won the Big 10 tournaments and is probably stealing a bid, as will Princeton if they prevail in the Ivy League final on Sunday.

The top 8 seeds will get first round home games.  The quarterfinals will all be held in Annapolis, and the Final Four will be in Philadelphia on Memorial Day weekend.

#GoIrish