Our #1 Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse (12-1) hammered the #2 Duke Blue Devils (12-5), 16-6. A heavily-Notre Dame crowd enjoyed watching the Irish masterclass on a hot afternoon in Charlotte.
Let’s be very clear about this: the win was not the result of Duke playing poorly. Our opponent will look at the stat sheet and not find a lot of areas where they believe they underperformed. Notre Dame was just excellent in all areas of the field. Their ability to do this to the #2 team in the country is really special.
The Plot
A rainy morning and warmups greeted the teams in Charlotte. The gloom cleared by game time and was replaced by sunny, hot and humid.
Carter Parlette was given the honor by his teammates to wear #40 for the game to honor Mike Sennett, following Liam Entenmann’s recognition on Friday. Like Liam, Carter did his part to respect the honor by giving an excellent performance all game.
The Irish jumped all over Duke to open the game behind a 5-for-7 performance by the faceoff unit led by Will Lynch. Jake Taylor opened the scoring a few minutes into the game, followed by a Reilly Gray goal, then Taylor again, Gray again, and finally CKav to put the Irish up 5-0 early. Duke was fortunate to score with 9 seconds left in the quarter after Josh Zawada did well to escape a well-timed double-team by Conlin and Napolitano to rotate the ball to Dyson Williams for a goal.
McLane and PKav extended the lead to 7-1 with early offense. The Irish defense allowed very few quality looks, and with 4 Entenmann saves, Notre Dame ended the half up a commanding 8-2.
Duke tried to make their stand coming out of the half with an improved faceoff effort, but 5 Entenmann saves blunted the effort. Duke was only able to manage a 3-3 stalemate in the quarter as the Irish depth took over late in the frame.
An early man-up goal in the 4th quarter was all the opponent could muster before the Irish depth took over and dominated by scoring the final 5 goals. The final score of 16-6 reflected the great effort shown by the Irish across the entire field.
The Scoring
Chris Kavanagh led Irish scorers with 3 goals and 2 assists. Jake Taylor has a hat trick, and Pat Kavanagh had 2 goals and an assist.
Gray and McLane had 2 goals each, Dobson 2 assists, and Angrick a goal and an assist. Maheras, Busenkell and Walker had a goal. Faison, Bayman and Ramsey had an assist.
13 Notre Dame players logged a point.
Liam Entenmann was again spectacular with 12 saves against 6 goals.
Will Lynch led the faceoff unit winning 15 of 21.
As a team, the boys had 28 ground balls (17 Duke), cleared 23 of 24, and had only 11 turnovers.
LacrosseReference.com calculated the Irish offense was 42.1% efficient (20.0% Duke).
35 Fighting Irish saw the field, with 27 playing early substantive minutes.
Thoughts
Depth. That’s really the secret of this team that has emerged as the season developed. We all knew PKav, CKav, Taylor, Dobson, Entenmann, etc. would dominate, but the ability to roll out twenty more guys without weakness is something very special.
The best illustration of this was late in the 2nd quarter when the Irish called a timeout to set up a final play for the half. The team exited the timeout with a play to be executed by the second midfield! What other team in the country has the confidence in their roster to do this?
The second midfield rewarded the coaches’ patience by becoming a productive element to this squad a few games into the season. The third midfield line did the same when they were given their chance during ACC league play. They are productive when given early front-line minutes against the top teams in the country. On Sunday versus #2 Duke, the scoring output of the 2nd and 3rd lines was entirely in balance with the first, as it was two days earlier versus #5 Virginia.
This comment on offensive depth does not discount the impact of the the excellent defensive effort. The high-powered Duke offense could only accumulate 6 goals, and one of them was against an empty net when Entenmann’s stick broke (on a great save!). This is a well-oiled unit. But even here depth is a critical element. Nearly all modern offenses are focused on attacking the SSDMs, but Notre Dame is able to roll out a fleet of great ones. And when Alacqua was unavailable for ACC Championship weekend, the Irish had confidence in a fifth, Tyler Buchner. The former Irish football quarterback was targeted every time he stepped on the field, and he performed magnificently! It’s hard to overstate the luxury of having this much depth at the position in the hot part of the season.
A few more points to emphasize in regard to the defense: reigning Tewaaraton Award winner Brennan O’Neill was held to a single goal on 8 shots, and the goal was on an empty net after a broken stick. Chris Conlin earned every accolade he received for his primary responsibility in this domination. Similarly, Josh Zawada was held to 2 assists after being tormented all game by freshman Shawn Lyght. Across the unit individual matchups were being won, and slides, when necessary, were nearly flawless.
The ACC trophy has left the stadium
The NCAA Tournament
It was no surprise that the Irish received the #1 seed. The will face the winner of the Sacred Heart/Albany play-in game on Sunday at 5:00 at Arlotta. Georgetown and Penn State round out their part of the bracket, leaving a tricky quarterfinal should the Irish advance (it is very bad luck to assume!).
Women’s lacrosse will also host their NCAA opener with the #7 seed and play Coastal Carolina on Friday at 1:00.
PLL Notes
The PLL College Entry Draft was held on Tuesday. Liam Entenmann (NY Atlas) and Pat Kavanagh (Boston Cannons) went in the first round, and Eric Dobson (Carolina Chaos) was selected in the second. It will be fun to see Pat and Matt play on the same team this summer!
#GoIrish
ND-ATL 2.0
So I have no prior background in lacrosse, shoot me straight here: how dope is this squad?
From what I read, they just boatracced the #2 team in the country, is this 2012 alabama we’re talking about? How tight are the margins in high end college lacrosse?
2012 Alabama may be an okay comparison, actually. They lost a close game to a good, but not great A&M team, we lost one close to a good but not great Georgetown team.
Importantly for the comparison both teams are crazy deep. If you take ND’s widely acclaimed top 5 players off the team, both Kavanaughs, Jake Taylor, Will Lynch, and Liam Entemann all off the team it’s conceivable they might be the number one seeded team with similar season results anyway.
That said, the margins get tight whenever a good team comes in and plays their best game. 3 weeks ago, against a Cornell team that didn’t make the 17 team NCAA tournament, ND trailed with 3 minutes to go in the game and scored the game winner with 6 seconds on the clock.
We’re entering the tournament as favorites against the remaining 16-team field. That’s betting-market recognition of a dominant team, but there are 10 other teams in the tournament who can get up and bite ND if the boys try to play their B game during the NCAA run (after the first round), and 4 of those who can compete with ND if everyone brings their A game to Philadelphia.
Starts tonight with the play-in game. LFG.
It’s not a bad comparison like Gambit says. Challenge with lacrosse is that it doesn’t take much to derail a game, so there’s always reason to worry. Having said this, this team has made several advancements over the course of the season and is playing at a high level. Much like the Alabama comparison, they have built up a tremendous amount of redundancy, so they are not as vulnerable should one player or unit have a bad day. What we like about the latest upgrade, it’s that, faced with the observation that teams have been catching up late in the came to make the final score closer than the game may have looked, they used their depth early to wear down their opponent and have plenty of gas left in the tank late in the game.
All this being said, no team is invulnerable and ND cannot afford to let up at all. There should be no misunderstanding of that basic fact. The good news is the coaches have constructed a team as well as a team can be built, and player leadership is very good and focused.
To answer the question directly: very dope.
You are correct, sir!
So what happens in the event of a broken stick? Does that player have to leave the field to grab another one and game just continues?
Good question, we are trying to confirm this, but our understanding is that the college rule is essentially same as HS rule. Goalie stick broken in crease gets a stoppage in play so that it can be replaced. Goalie outside of crease is the same as a regular player, so if stick breaks, player has to immediately leave and get new stick or get illegal procedure penalty. In neither circumstance can goalie play with broken stick.
We haven’t studied replay close enough to tell if Liam’s stick broken making the save or when he went after ground ball. I’m not sure he knew when, either.
We’ll post if we hear differently
Cool, thanks for the info. With such a fast moving sport i get why playing with a broken stick would be forbidden, sharp pointy objects and speed aren’t a great mix.