After a controversial snubbing in 2022, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse earned their spot into the NCAA Tournament. The Irish were assigned the #3 seed and will host ASun champion Utah in the the first round on Saturday at 2:30.
The Bracket
The winner of this first round game will play the winner of #6 Johns Hopkins and Bryant for a spot in the final four. The other end of this side of the bracket includes Irish nemesis Virginia (#2), Georgetown (#7), Yale and Richmond.
Michigan and Princeton were surprise winners of their conference tournaments, popping the bubble and making Denver and Penn the first teams out. Yale was the last at-large team selected.
Duke was given the first seed and will face the winner of the Delaware/Marist play-in game. Cornell (#8) is the other seeded team in the bracket.
5-loss Maryland was assigned the #4 seed and will play Army West Point. Penn State (#5) is the other seeded team in its bracket.
Utah
The ASun champion Utes are 12-4 and riding an 11-game win streak. They beat Air Force this weekend, 11-9, to earn the conference automatic qualifier into the tournament. Utah is a lacrosse success story, only being elevated from club to Division 1 in 2019. Their pace of play is the fastest in Division 1, and they are the 6th most efficient offense. It will be a very different type of test than any team the Irish have played this season.
Selection Analysis
Notre Dame is in the tournament and has a path to the final four appropriate to its success in the regular season. They control their destiny and that is all they (and we) wanted. That’s all that needs to be said about the process. Focus is on the game.
The selection committee chair offered an explanation of how the committee came to seed positions one through three. We can discuss that gibberish some other time. Notre Dame has its path to the championship. Worrying about another team’s path or how these were determined are distractions. We got what we wanted.
Go Irish, Beat Utes.
Women’s Bracket
The women’s team will open their tournament hosting Mercer, the winner to play the winner of #6 Florida and Jacksonville. The women may be disappointed they did not get a seed, but they have a clear path forward.
We have a busy week of watching Utah games ahead of us. We’ll get a preview up later in the week.
#GoIrish
Getting excited, looking forward to the preview!
Watching film has been a chore. Utah clearly has a lot of talent and play an exciting style, but in the last month they have played some really struggling opposition. These games are hard to watch.
The Utah/Air Force ASUN title game clip that you tweeted reminded me of Daniel Cormier trying to explain that “there are levels to this game” and let’s at least say for now that Air Force isn’t on our level.
Utah we’ll let be determined on Saturday.
Blindish resume comparison:
Team A
Team B
Not to bias future readers, but stronger RPI, fewer losses, more quality wins, and better efficiency metrics seem like they have to out-weigh just head-to-head.
Well… ND f-ball, 1989… or 1993… take your pick, one or another
It gets really wild when you compare against #1 Duke, noting that the committee said head-to-head was considered ND/UVa placement, but specifically not considered ND/Duke. They aren’t even trying.
Be that as it may, teams 1-3 are without question the top 3, and none is getting a noticeable scheduling advantage over another. As it applies to our thoughts on ND (and meaning no disrespect to any of our potential opponents), we’d rather the boys have the path they got than have to deal with rematches against a resurgent Georgetown, or heaven forbid, against media darling Michigan. The broadcasts would have been insufferable. The only downside for ND is that nemesis UVa would be the potential semifinal opponent as opposed to a potential championship game opponent. To win the Natty, ND will likely have to go through UVa regardless. Not worth worrying what day on Memorial Day weekend it happens. They have work to do to even get there, and if the want to be champions, they will have to figure it out.
Apparently we needed one more game scheduled against Duke for another win.