Our #1 Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse (11-0, 4-0 ACC) broke the Triangle of Doom by beating the #5 Virginia Cavaliers (10-4, 1-3 ACC), 11-9. The boys finished the regular season undefeated and at the top of the ACC.
The Cavaliers gave the Irish a difficult test and forced the boys to come back from a considerable deficit, but ACC Coach of the Year and Baumer Family Head Men’s Lacrosse Coach Kevin Corrigan summed up the victory well: “We don’t flinch.”
The Plot
Morning rain made the Klockner field very slick for the competitors, with both teams frequently struggling to stay upright.
The Irish got on the board first on a goal by Devon McLane, assisted by CKav. The home team responded, but this time CKav scored to but the Irish back ahead. The quarter continued with the teams exchanging goals and finishing the frame even at 3-3.
The second quarter proved to be more difficult for Notre Dame, with Virginia goalie Matt Nunes frustrating the Irish shooters with 6 saves. Jake Taylor scored man-up, but 3 Cavalier goals but the home team up 6-4 at the half.
Virginia’s Payton Cormier scored his 3rd goal early in the second half to put them up 3. From this point forward the Irish established control with consecutive goals by Taylor, PKav, Busenkell, Ricciardelli and Taylor again. A late Virginia goal kept the teams even at 8-8 to end the quarter.
Virginia opened the scoring in the 4th to take a 1-goal lead, but the Irish did not flinch. The Notre Dame defense shut their opponent down for the rest of the game, and goals by McLane, Faison and McLane again kept the Irish up for good. The boys commanded the middle of the field and Lynch was a perfect 5 for 5 in the quarter to erase any hope of a home team comeback.
The Scoring
Devon McLane (3g, 1a, 2gb) and ACC Offensive Player of the Year Pat Kavanagh (2g, 2a, 5gb) led Irish scorers. Chris Kavanagh and Max Busenkell each had a goal and 2 assists. Jake Taylor had 2 goals, and Faison and Ricciardelli each had a goal. Parlette and Dobson rounded out the scoring with assists.
The Notre Dame poles had a great day, led by ACC Defensive Player of the Week Will Donovan’s 4gb, 4ct day. Chris Conlin (5gb, 2ct), Marco Napolitano (1gb, 2ct) and Shawn Lyght (3gb) were stellar as well.
ACC Defensive Player of the Year and ACC Goalie of the Year Liam Entenmann was impressive with 11 saves. Will Lynch returned from injury to go 10 of 21 from the dot, including a perfect 5 for 5Â 4th quarter.
The key stat of the game: The Irish won the ground ball battle by a massive 50-26 margin, including dominating the 4th quarter 16-3.
It was a day for the defenses, with both team’s playing well below their season average efficiency (ND 24.4%, UVa 23.1%).
27 Irish players saw the field, all with significant minutes.
Our Pregame Questions
We think the boys answered our questions well!
- Trust depth: 100% yes!! The Irish ran 3 midfield lines, 5 SSDMS (Buchner regularly in the rotation) and Ricciardelli and Bayman had relief shifts on attack. We cannot overstate the impact this had late in the game. While fatigue made Virginia incredibly sloppy, Notre Dame was able to play full gas and dominate the middle of the field. Virginia was not used to being on the back foot like this.
- Manage the forest: It wasn’t easy for the Irish, but they did a better job of managing Kastner & crew than they have in quite a while. Virginia had to throw in a few defensive gimmicks to keep the Irish offense off balance, and indicator of the progress the Irish were having in solving for Virginia’s internal size.
- Don’t let Virginia run:Â The Irish were disciplined throughout the game and gave the Cavaliers few transition opportunities. As noted above, Notre Dame’s great use of depth may the home team unable to play the uptempo game they wanted to play. Well done, boys!
Special mention goes to Shawn Lyght for limiting Shellenberger. The All-American struggled to beat the Notre Dame freshman straight-up. He then had to waste valuable possession time working out picks to shed Lyght, only to have Lyght’s support hold their ground. Virginia will likely have a new wrinkle in the rematch, but is was great to see the freshman pass such a difficult test.
Up Next
The win earned the Irish the #1 seed and a rematch with Virginia in the opening round of the ACC Tournament in Charlotte. The boys play Friday at 5:00 pm (ACCN), with the winner playing in the finals on Sunday at noon.
As we have been noting for a few weeks, the boys’ success will be directly related to the degree to which a full 27+ players can be productive. First, it’s how the team counters Virginia’s efforts at tempo and transition. Second, it’s by far the best way to survive such a compressed weekend schedule. It will hopefully be a successful trial run towards Memorial Day success.
While Friday’s game is probably more critical to the Cavalier’s NCAA prospects, it is also an important opportunity for the Irish offense to find solutions to some of the gimmicky wrinkles the Cavaliers deployed this past weekend, such as locking out PKav on the man-up. Coach Tiffany will open up the full bad of tricks. He’s not afraid of novel solutions. The boys will need to show themselves that they can solve these problems in real time and solve them quickly.
Sunday evening will be the NCAA selection show.
It will be an exciting weekend of lacrosse!
#GoIrish
ND-ATL 2.0
So the Cornell game didn’t count?
Not sure what you mean by this?
Sorry-I meant Georgetown. I knew there was some loss in there.
ND is 11-1 / 4-0 (first sentence)
Made a similar comment on OFD. Sit back and soak this stuff in. This group is pretty special. You just don’t get to watch it all that often. UVA had EVERYTHING to lose and couldn’t solve for ND’s depth, adjustments, quick passing, etc. I thought our shot quality was bad in Q2 costing ND a chance to blow the game open. But sheesh. Some of the stuff they do at lightning speed is just crazy. And all ND did was throw a freshman on one of the best in all of college lax (Shellenberger) and hold him in check. Like I said, sit back and enjoy!
Lyght is so fun to watch. He is so efficient in his movement and rarely loses track of where he is on the field. He doesn’t need to take risks and slap the heck out of the player he is covering. And he’s really attentive off-ball. He disrupts so many passes that may not even be coming to his cover.
You are 100% right, sit back and enjoy to show.
It was interesting to see UVA very ready for Faison in transition. The Irish had worked out a clearing cheat code in getting Faison the ball and backing off the midline to give him space to outrun… anyone. UVA was doubling him as soon as he caught the ball to slow the ND transition and caused at least one turnover that way.
Also on the transition game, the Kavanaughs are spending a record amount of time in the defensive end the last couple weeks. Against UNC Chris blew into the defensive end during the ride to stay on his guy, and I think both Chris and Pat have gone over center to help clear. Seems like an interesting wrinkle to add for a team that sporadically has trouble staying onside, I’ve wondered if the risk is worth the reward, but it has worked so far.
I’m a little dubious about the revived ACC tourney taking place the weekend before the NCAA tournament potentially putting our guys at a slight disadvantage as May rolls on. Maybe it makes sense to people with conference brain, but the prize is in Philadelphia, not in Charlotte.
Pushing an attackman to the defensive end to help with a clear has become a pretty common set at all levels of the game in the past year or so. ND has used it from time to time, but Virginia certainly seems to be the first time they had to use it that much.
As for the ACC tournament, it’s a bummer that Notre Dame and the other ACC teams have little to gain, but in fairness it seemed a smart precaution when the schedule came out. The ” RPI booster” tournament has certainly helped out in the past
Yeah, I probably didn’t completely finish my thesis on why ND in particular using attackmen to work the defensive clears is a little odd, and that is that the team is crazy deep at midfield, but it takes an act of God to get PKav, CKav, or Taylor off the field for any period of time (or a helmet coming off, apparently).
Plus they’re a good clearing team without the attackmen. Plus without adding this wrinkle they’ve nearly eliminated offside calls since early in the season. For what seem like relatively limited advantages it just seemed odd to put more miles on the attackmen’s legs right at the end of the regular season.
The obvious solution seems to be, going forward, move the ACC tournament back a week. The women’s ACC tournament ended on the 28th and their NCAA tournament is on the same schedule as the men’s. This team is in pole position to defend their title right now and it’s going to be very annoying if there are any important injuries during this unimportant tournament.
Fair point, the pre-Covid set up of ACC tournament, then Army on selection weekend, seems better at a glance.