That was a rough one to watch and re-watch. Ain’t no other way to put it.

Our #2 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (13-3) lost to the Princeton Tigers (17-2) in the finals by a score of 16-9 last week. We took some time to review the game, with a short break to celebrate Shawn Lyght winning the Tewaaraton trophy.

It wasn’t the zone

One big thing that is being talked about everywhere is the Princeton zone and how strong it was. While we aren’t going to sit here and say it wasn’t a good zone or gameplan, we’d be the first to admit we weren’t completely right about what they were going to try.

But what is important to talk about is the fact that it wasn’t the zone that caused their success. A zone can be very good, but only under specific, and very unusual circumstances: the opponent does not possess the ball long enough to crack the zone. That’s where the Irish fell short.

As any lacrosse player will tell you, the way to break a zone is with time. When you have time you can find the holes in the zone and abuse them. That is among the reasons why we don’t see it utilized very often. It’s not magic, it is used to pause an offense, particularly a rampant one. Note, Princeton did not open in zone, they went to it after a timeout when their stock defense got torched for three goals.

The boys never got the time to work the zone. Going back and rewatching the game, our Irish worked the zone for 1 minute and 20 seconds on offense, split between two short possessions after the 3 goal ND run and the Princeton timeout in the first quarter. Plain and simple, that isn’t long enough to break any zone. The possession time imbalance on paper was as lopsided as we’ve ever seen.

It didn’t get better in the second quarter during the 8-0 Princeton run. This one required a second viewing as ground ball and faceoff stats don’t really tell an accurate story. Princeton nominally had 2 minutes more possession, but much of the Notre Dame time on offense was burned by penalty killing and deliberate substitution. The imbalance of meaningful time working their respective offense was glaring.

The turnover coming out of the Irish timeout after the 6th Princeton goal was particularly impactful on meaningful possession time, as was the failed clear that followed it. Turnovers happen, not all of them are equal.

It wasn’t like the boys weren’t finding shot opportunities with their first half time either. Miller, for example, had some great looks, but Croddick also had some insane saves. A zone is viable for longer when the goalie is hot. Croddick deserves a lot of credit in this regard.

Then where was the problem?

On the flip side of the field, this means that the boys were on defense nearly the whole time. As a defenseman myself, I can confirm that lengthy possessions are difficult to stop. The boys were getting the ball on the turf, but failed to get ground balls. These lengthened possessions not only frequently lead to goals, but also tire the defense out.

To add to the lengthy possessions were the two 2-minute locked-in penalties. While the man-down unit again did great and stopped them, the amount of effort and energy that takes is not nearly negligible. 

Putting these two things together, and you have an exhausted defense that is forced to play defense for minutes on end. That’s a recipe for disaster. 

The possession, ground ball and turnover sequences from the Tiger 6th to 8th goals were ground zero for the Irish problems. That exhaustion appears to be the direct cause for the 4 Princeton goals in the last 3 minutes of the half that effectively doomed the Irish.

What does all this mean? Well like we said in our instant reaction, every youth coach was validated. Ground balls win championships. The Irish win just a few of these and the complexion of the game would have been vastly different.

Could have, should have

With the benefit of hindsight, we can look at a few things that may have helped stop the bleeding. This isn’t criticism, just an observation with the benefit of information that the coaching staff did not have.  As Coach Corrigan note below, there’s limited value to the could’ves, should’ves and would’ves. 

With so little time on offense, Notre Dame could have benefited by using the first line exclusively in the late first and second quarters. The Irish rolled their lines to keep them fresh like they always do, but the two lines were reinventing the wheel every time they went out. The first line was finding good looks. In retrospect, it would have been better to keep them on the field and continue their progress.

One criticism that we reject is the utilization of Shawn Lyght. Popular internet commentators suggested having Lyght on Kabiri just meant Lyght was on the perimeter doing cardio, as Kabiri wasn’t involved in the game-deciding run. 

Kabiri wasn’t playing decoy, Lyght just had him covered. Princeton has a lot of great players on offense, the other five on defense had difficult challenges. The Tigers got the better of them. Suggesting they would have had better success against Princeton’s best player seems silly.

Not all Bad

First off, we want to congratulate and thank all the seniors. It was a great season, and despite how it ended, getting to the championship is no small feat. The boys should be incredibly proud.

Let’s also appreciate that the boys kept their head in the game in the second half and showed what they can do against the Princeton defense. 

Thomas Ricciardelli once again had an outstanding game, tallying 19 saves on the day. He did everything in his power to keep the boys in the fight. Remaining above 50% in a game like that is absurd. We are lucky to have him, something we all need to remember in the unfairness of the post-Entenmann era. 

Ricciardelli, along with Yago and Lyght were given all tournament honors, all of which were deserving. And as we know now, Lyght also won the Tewaaraton. Extremely well-deserved, no matter what the Syracuse hive may have to whine about.

Finally, it is good to see all hope is not lost in the team. We had the opportunity to ask Coach Corrigan a question after the game, and want to end it off with his response:

18 STRIPES: What lesson do you want the team as young men to take away from a day like today where it doesn’t go their way after a great season? 

CORRIGAN: “You know, I said to them right after the game, I said success has many parents and failure is an orphan. But we’re not going to handle it that way. We’re going to be accountable for all the good things that happened to us this year, which was a lot. And accountable for how we held each other up all year and did all that. And then we’re going to be accountable to each other for the things that didn’t go well, like today, and learn from that and get better from it. We’re not going to point fingers. We’re not going to talk about would’ves, should’ves and could’ves. We’re going to take it like men and handle ourselves with class and get back to work, because that’s the only thing you can do.”

 

All in all, it was a great season with a lot to be happy about. But we are all hungry and excited for next season.

For the next few weeks, we will shift our coverage onto the Irish players in the PLL.

 

#GoIrish

LUKE BURGAR

ND-ATL 2.0