The boys are heading to Charlottesville to play for the National Championship! 

Our #2 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (12-2) beat the John Hopkins Blue Jays (10-6), 15-9, on Saturday in Hempstead, NY. Like Jacksonville the week before, Johns Hopkins came prepared with a good plan. Notre Dame was able to adjust and comfortably prevail.

PLANS AND COUNTER-PLANS

The Blue Jays committed to grinding out long possessions and keep the ball out of the hands of the Irish. They started the game quite successfully in this regard, holding 66% of the possession in the first quarter, earning a 2-3 lead at the end of one, and keeping it tied at 6-6 at the half

Their patience was paying off with goals scored with 12 seconds left in the first quarter, and with 9 seconds before the half. They were on their way to making the game a coin flip.

The Irish had other plans, counter with an aggressive fast break and good ball movement. It took a while to move through the gears in the first half, but three quick goals by Yago, Behrman and Jeffrey to open the second half made continuing a grinding strategy impossible for Johns Hopkins, and it was a quick end from there.

They got us into their game in the first half a little bit…In the second half I was really proud of our guys how the came back and just turned it into more of our game. -Coach Corrigan

THE GOOD

Notre Dame was 37% efficient with the ball as calculated by our friends at Lacrosse Reference. This is top-5 level efficiency in the regular season, and off the charts in the playoffs.

Josh Yago’s 7 points (4g 3a) are the highlight of the stat sheet. Matt’s Jeffrey’s 5 points (2g 3a) were timely and stellar.

As a team, the boys won the ground ball battle, 37-22, outshot their opponent 41-26, and had a slight edge at the faceoff dot.

Most importantly, everyone ate. 10 of 15 goals were assisted, and the team had 6 different double-digit point scorers. Yago may have had the most impressive line, but there was scoring everywhere.

The thing that makes it hard to defend us is that right now I couldn’t tell you who our best player is. And so I’m certain the people watching us don’t have a lot better idea than I do.-Coach Corrigan

The defense was more than up to the challenge. Only 3 goals allowed in the second half, with one of those in garbage time. Once the offense forced them out of their plan, the defense locked them down completely. It was also second week in a row of great man-down defense!

THE “BAD”

There’s really not much to complain about. As noted above, the Johns Hopkins plan forced the Irish into another slow start. This isn’t ideal, but the Blue Jays were well prepared and deserve credit.

Ricciardelli had a bit of a statistical rough day. To be fair, very little made it through to him, so it’s an unfair sample. The defense was too good.

The man-up unit struggled a bit. Props to Brady Pokorny for getting on the board, but the boys will need to succeed in better than 20% in Charlottesville.

The field wasn’t great. Newly laid turf was slippery and impacted the game. It influenced both teams equally, but it was a bad look for a NCAA quarterfinal venue of the quality of Shuart Stadium.

The unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Josh Yago was among the dumbest calls we have seen in a long while. Pointing at the scoreboard? Get over yourself, refs!

ELSEWHERE

Syracuse beat North Carolina for the right to play Notre Dame in the semifinal. We’ll talk about that more later in the week. We’ll just say it wasn’t the best played game by either team.

Princeton thumped Penn State, closing the books on a terrible year for the Big 10.

In the last quarterfinal, Duke hammered a sleepwalking Georgetown. We regret writing the Blue Devils’ obituary after their loss to the Irish a few weeks ago, but this game was more about what a poor showing the fans got from the Hoyas.  

 

We’ll have Princeton vs. Duke, and Notre Dame vs. Syracuse. Four ACC teams on Memorial Day weekend accurately reflect the quality of the teams in the conference this year.

18 Stripes will be reporting from Charlottesville this weekend, thank you for following us! We’ll keep everyone updated.

 

Go Irish

 

Luke Burgar

ND-ATL 2.0