Our #6/#7 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (4-2) take on the #11 Duke Blue Devils (8-2). The game will be played at noon on  Saturday at Arlotta Stadium in South Bend. The game will be broadcast on ESPNU.

Look for the Irish to continue building upon their improvements seen in their stomping of Michigan. But an angry Duke is not an easy opponent, and the Blue Devils are definitely angry after suffering a beat down by Denver last week in Dallas.

The Opponent

The Irish and Blue Devils are all too familiar with each other at this point. Duke leads the overall series 17-16. With the yearly regular season game and the possible match-ups in the ACC and NCAA playoffs, they certainly face off against each other a lot. The Irish have dominated the match-up over the past few years, winning the last 6 games, including a win in the 2023 national championship game. 

However, Duke will be coming into this game with a huge chip on their shoulder and the need to prove themselves after losing to Denver 6-13.  Duke has been playing reasonably well this season, but with a few unconvincing games.

Offensively, the Blue Devils are led by Maryland transfer and Atlanta native Eric Malever. Malever leads the Blue Devils with a whopping 22 goals and 22 assists. While Malever leads their scoring by some margin, he has a great supporting cast in Max Sloat with 14 goals 13 assists, Andrew McAdorey with 13 goals 12 assists, Luke Grayum with 19 goals 3 assists, and Benn Johnson with 17 goals 5 assists. Notably the Blue Devils lost Tewaaraton winner Brennan O’Neil who had been their main threat for the past few years. They will be running a different style of offense than the Irish have seen from them in a few years.

To our observation, Malever (#0) will normally present as a more traditional distributing attackman, while McAdorey (#2) will present as an attack/midfield hybrid coming out of the box. It’s a tricky combo to defend. Sometime they reverse roles to great effect.

On the defensive end of the field they are led by SSDM Adain Maguire with 20 CTOs and 35GBs, as well as Charlie Johnson with 17 CTOs and 15 GBs. Maguire is a special player operating in the defensive midfield. Between the pipes is Patrick Jamieson who has been saving at a clean 50% on the season. While Duke’s defense is changing, just like their offense, they are certainty nothing to laugh at and will require the boys to be playing their best.

Our Questions

Going into the start of Notre Dame’s ACC play, we are resetting our three questions to some degree:

  1. Slowing down their offense: It is no secret that Malever is their best producing player with a whopping 44 points on the season. He generates a ton of offense for the team. If the defense is able to slow him down it will likely slow down their whole offense. Last time the team played Malever they held him to 1 goal 2 assist  as a Maryland Terrapin in the national championship game. This is a stat line we will be aiming for again. But, as he is an assist threat everyone will need to be paying attention at all times.
  2. Dealing with adversity: So far this season when we have faced a good defenses there has been a tendency of the offense to disappear for long periods of game time. With a team as good as Duke this simply can not happen. The boys will need to maintain composure even if things don’t go perfectly and remember that if they play like we know they can, they are by far the better team. There is a reason why the Irish are the most efficient offensive team in the country, they just need to find a way to play at that level for 60 minutes.
  3. No Sloppiness: As much as it pains us to continuously harp on it, the sloppy play has been the main issue holding this team back. While it was honestly really good against Michigan, destroying the ground ball and shot battle with only 12 turnovers, Duke is simply a lot better of a team. Like we mentioned in the previous question, the boys need to maintain composure and not get in their own heads making sloppy mistakes. 

This game will open the long stretch of ACC play for the boys which will take up pretty much the rest of the regular season aside from the regular season ender against Penn. It would be great to start ACC play with a big win! There aren’t any easy games left, the boys will have to earn their spot in the tournament.

#GoIrish!

ND-ATL 2.0