PLL Week 4 San Diego, the PLL All-Star Weekend, and PLL Week 5 Chicago are in the books. Our Notre Dame Fighting Irish lacrosse alumni continue to shine, led by the reemergence of Pat Kavanagh.

Hall of Fame

Before we get into the recap of the past two weekends, we want to express a huge congratulations to Coach Corrigan! Last week he was inducted into the IMLCA College Lacrosse Hall of Fame! This was a long overdue achievement for our two-time national championship winning coach!

He has put together some amazing teams to write about and we look forward to the future of the program in the next few years in South Bend.

Return of the Bomb Squad

PLL Week Four in San Diego saw the return of Sergio Perkovic! In his return game he put up an outstanding 4 points including one 2-pointer. Coming off injury we were also reminded of the “Perkovic rule”, that being the all-or-nothing nature of his professional game, in PLL Week Five in Chicago where a scoring bonanza is followed by a rough 0-for outing.

We haven’t had the opportunity to say it for a couple seasons, but even with some inconsistency, the Perking Lot has returned! With his long range, Sergio has instantly fit into this Chaos team very well as their stretch shooter to allow the main look they want of the inside. It seems the role of Perkovic is what the Chaos originally hoped to extract from Dobson. While of course we are disappointed that one of our Notre Dame players is being “replaced”, we recognize they fill the same role and PLL roster limits make it impossible to carry both at the same time.

Sergio may need to share the Perking Lot with Bryan Costabile. Costabile has been a huge threat from deep for the Atlas all season and is currently tied for second most two-pointers in the league. While Costabile didn’t put up a two pointer in San Diego, he did have a goal on the game. And, simply the threat of him from deep opened up the field from players like Teat and Shellenberger, which played a huge role in the Atlas’ win.

Costabile followed up that with another two goals in Chicago. While not the typical two pointers we are used to seeing from him, he still impacts the game in a huge way with his range. He adapts to what the defense is giving him while still making sure the opponent has to prioritize his 2-point range. 

Costa’s highlight was not a long-range shot, however. We still aren’t sure how he got away with that amazing diving goal that he scored twister!

https://www.youtube.com/wa Wch?v=YQ-pvdnal_E  @ 2:50 not sure how to get smaller clip

The Three Musketeers

The trio of Notre Dame defensemen (Epple, Ramsay and Keilty) on the Cannons have once again been a dominant force. In the win over the Chaos, the Cannons had triple the cause turnovers of their opponent. Of that number Epple, Kielty, and Ramsey combined had as many CTOs as the whole of the Chaos. With the dominance the Irish defense has displayed for as long as we can remember, this comes as no surprise. The chemistry between these players, all three of which come from different eras of the team, is visible and shows just how consistently great the Irish defense is.

However, they are the occasional bumps in the road. In Chicago they were challenged by Costabile and the high powered Atlas offense. Simply put, they uncharacteristically let the game get away from them by the third quarter. Of that struggle on defense, the Notre Dame trio proved to be the one piece of the puzzle that was still slightly working, tallying up a total of 4 caused turnovers and 6 ground balls between the group.

MVP-Kav

PKav had another set of amazing these past weekends. He recorded 5 goals and 3 assists off of 38 touches in a dominant win over the Redwoods. That performance puts PKav at 3.8 points per game (third in the league).

He followed with another 4 point game against the Whips in Chicago. While he didn’t lead the team in points (second to O’Neil’s 6) he did lead the team in touches by a good margin. We hate to beat a dead horse, but PKav in our eyes has solidified himself as a leader of this Outlaws team. When it runs through him, good things happen. If the Outlaws continue with this trend of running their offense through PKav, they are definitely our favorites to win the league this year.

Pat has lead the charge in the Outlaws comeback, as the have climbed from the bottom of rankings to now being the number 1 team. It is safe to say he is a serious MVP contender.

Why it is far too early to say anything for sure, we look forward to the future PKav will have the rest of this season as he continues his journey to win every lacrosse award out there.

Fire Watch

While we hate to put it this way, there truly isn’t any other way to say it. The Redwoods looked bad.

In both of their games in their homecoming weekend they kept it close late but, remained unable to close it out. 

In the opening game against the Outlaws, it was a one goal game heading into the fourth. The Woods were then outscored 7-2 (a MacAdory two point goal). Our Irish alumni on the team didn’t necessarily play badly with CKav having 2 goals and an assist combined with Garnsey’s goal and assist, but even they couldn’t generate anything late.

A one time occurrence where the team stalls isn’t too big of a concern but the fact that it happened twice in the same weekend is. In the latter game, when crunch time came in the fourth quarter (which started in a tie) the Woods once again stalled and were outscored 3-0.

To be entirely honest, in the latter game the Irish-led defense which is usually stellar was unable to control the Waterdog offense whatsoever. The only reason that game was close was due to 3 two-point goals (one from CKav). While having a two-point offense is a valuable, it isn’t the most reliable. Needing multiple two point goals to land to stay in the game is not a safe strategy at all.

Outside of CKav’s two-pointer the Irish on both sides of the ball were quiet all game which was disappointing to see. 

The following regular season weekend wasn’t much better for the Redwoods. In a not so shocking turn of events, the Woods were in a neck and neck game, going into the fourth before collapsing once again. 

It doesn’t even seem that there is anything necessarily wrong either. The Woods two point game was active again, with another 2 of them this game. CKav continues to be a leader on the stat sheet adding a goal and 2 assists, leading the team in points, with Garnsey adding a goal of his own. It feels very similar to the problem this past year’s Notre Dame team faced, they lack consistency.

As we experienced this spring, consistency issues are a struggle to watch but are fixable. With the upcoming game against the Atlas who are currently one of the stronger teams in the league, they will need to get it figured out fast.

All that being said, he have to remember this team was ranked at the top of the league earlier this season. It is not out of the question for them to be successful. There is just a lot that needs to be fixed to return to their previous successes.

Winner Winner, #1 Goalie

Entenmann once again played lights out. He finished the week four game at 50%, which while already amazing doesn’t show the fact that he was 100% in the fourth quarter that started tied. 

That is what makes Entenmann so good. When it is time to clutch up and win the game, he thrives. In an almost polar opposite fashion to his former teammates on the Redwoods, he is consistent.

In the following regular season weekend, he continued his dominate season with 11 saves at just over 50% on the day. It is worth mentioning that the 50% number comes after a rough fourth quarter, where the game was already pretty much over. If you narrow the stats to the closer sections of the game where every play matters, his numbers skyrocket. Showing once again how when the game is on the line Entenmann always steps up.

And, not only did he play well in the regular season match-ups but he also won the goalie-wars all star event! He beat out McNaney, Dobson, and Kirst to win the 1v1 goalie event. With some of the shots he was scoring, it would be fun to see him with a shortie in his hands.

Congrats to Liam for making all-star honors and winning the goalie wars skills challenge!

Kav’s Together Strong

While it wasn’t for nearly as long as we would have liked it to be, the Kavanaugh brother got to team up for the relay race skills challenge!

They put up an impressive time but unfortunately fell short. While we personally feel there was some suspicious activity in the timing of the teams, we are still very proud of them.

While their team-up didn’t end as we hoped, Chris was able to make it up by winning the accuracy challenge! He outscored O’Neil, Fields, and Holman with ten targets hit on the male side, and then beating the winner of the WLL challenge with six targets hit during the halftime of the all-star game.

PKav continued his weekend with an unbelievable all-star game performance. He had two goals in the game, both of which we still don’t know how they went in. 

Of the two, craziest one was a no look behind the back which was scored on Entenmann. We are sure Pat won’t let Liam hear the end of that for a while.

Congratulations again to Pat and Chris for making all-star honors, and congratulations to Chris from winning the accuracy challenge.

 

For Week Six the league moves to Fairfield. The match-ups will be Atlas vs Redwoods, Archers vs Chaos, Cannons vs Outlaws, and Waterdogs vs Whipsnakes. Tune in!

 

#GoIrish

ND-ATL 2.0