Our #6 Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse (2-1) host the #3 Maryland Terrapin (4-0) Sunday at noon at Arlotta Stadium, ESPU. The forecast predicts a warm, sunny day, and there will be free food for students. It will be fun to see the berm packed with students cheering on the Irish.

The Opponent

Maryland is a very familiar foe for the Irish. Last year’s 13-12 Irish win in Maryland in 3 OTs may have been the NCAA game of the year and was critical to Notre Dame’s championship run. The overall series tilts to the Terps, 7-9, and it has a long tradition of being a rock fight. The modern game isn’t as low scoring as the 5-to-4 type classic games of this series, but they are almost all extremely close and extremely physical.

Maryland has wins over ranked Richmond (in OT), Loyola, and Syracuse (in OT), and most recently a 13-7 win over well-regarded Princeton. This team has been tested a lot this season and has risen to the challenge each time.

Defender Ajax Zapitello (#1) may be the best defender in the country this year. It will be interesting to see against whom the Maryland coaches direct his attention. A pair of Atlantans lead their scoring, Eric Malever (#10) and Braden Erksa (#4). They are flanked by the lethal Eric Spanos (#7) and Daniel Maltz (#37). Their goalie Logan McNaney is a former NCAA Tournament Outstanding Player like our Liam Entenmann, and at the faceoff dot they bring out one of the best in Luke Wierman (67% wins).

Our Three Questions

There is no getting around the fact that this is a very important game for the Irish against a very difficult team.  This week’s questions took a lot of thought, but we are very optimistic that the Irish will start strong and put on a good show for the fans at Arlotta.

  1. Who’s the boss? While crisp ball movement is a core strength of this Irish team, at some point the leaders on this team are going to be called upon to make individual plays. There are no better examples of this than in the Maryland game last year when CKav forced his way past All-American Brett Makar to dive and score the goal that put the Irish into overtime, and then PKav beating Ajax Zapitello for the 3-OT game winner. We can’t forget the heroics of Eric Dobson, who was the “party starter” as no team had a good pregame plan to keep him from getting to where he wanted to go to shoot. And let’s not forget Jake Taylor wasn’t back from injury in last year’s game.
  2. Control the middle. The Irish have to win the middle of the field. Clears, rides, faceoff, wing play, and ground ball hustle will be where the Irish must gain an advantage over the Terrapins. The boys can’t let Maryland control the pace of play. Subquestion 2a is to make sure we come out of the gate controlling the middle of the field. In last year’s contest (and to some degree last week against Georgetown), the opponent got the early upper hand in these categories and made life very difficult for the Irish. We remember the first quarter 19-shot Maryland bombardment fueled by 1 of 8 faceoffs, 4 of 6 clears and 1 to 7 ground balls.
  3. Midfield rhythm. In his recent Inside Lacrosse podcast, former Irish midfielder Nick Ossello reminded us of an old Coach Byrne maxim: there is no better complement to a defense than for the opponent to simply admit their offense could not get into a rhythm. That’s pretty much what Georgetown did to the Irish midfield last week.  The boys couldn’t go exactly where they wanted to go, or outlet where they wanted to outlet (it’s also what Penn did to Duke yesterday). They can expect a similar plan from Maryland, and the boys need to show they can dictate terms or have a plan to readily adapt. The team has a lot of different styles available to it from the midfield roster, from those taking primary roles in the first few games, to players like Busenkell and Finley who are available in reserve for a change in pace.

In other lacrosse news…

Our #5 Notre Dame Fighting Irish women’s lacrosse team had a big 7-5 win over #7 North Carolina in Chapel Hill!!

At the time of this writing, the entire men’s ACC lost at least once this week. Virginia lost to Johns Hopkins today, Duke lost to Penn last night, North Carolina lost to Princeton last night, and Syracuse lost to Army on Wednesday. The conference needs to improve its out-of-conference fortunes to avoid a repeat of 2022 selection Sunday. Let’s hope the tide changes with a big Irish win over Maryland!

As part of your pregame preparations, take some time to listen to our friends Drew Brennan and David Brogan preview the game in the Exit 77 podcast. Also, please keep in mind Ground Balls for CityLax and Pediatric Pep Talk,

#GoIrish

ND-Atl 2.0