Our Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse (3-1) suffered a heartbreaking loss to the #2 (now #1) Maryland Terrapins (5-0). 

This 2024 championship rematch certainly didn’t disappoint. It was a hard fought game by both teams, going down to the final seconds We wouldn’t have expected less from considering it was a #1 vs #2 match-up. There were many stand-out performances on both sides, and while we wish it would have gone the other way it was still crazy to watch. The amazing crowd of over 10,000 in Atlanta had the pleasure of watching what may be the best game of the regular season.

There is a lot to discuss. The boys will be a little disappointed that unforced errors put them behind in a very winnable game, but they will also be encouraged that even with these early-season concerns it took heroic efforts by Maryland goalie Logan McNaney and defenseman Will Shaler to beat the Irish by only one. 

The Plot

Taylor opened up the scoring with an amazing BTB goal off the first possession of the game. This was followed up by a goal from CKav off a broken stick by Maryland. Maryland closed the gap to one with a dodge to the inside. Faison brings the lead back to two in his first full game back and forces a Maryland time out. Though unfortunately, in what seems to happen all too often to the Irish, Maryland had a last second goal to bring it to within 1 at the end of the first. 

Neither team found the net for the early minutes of the second until Maryland opened up the scoring to tie the game up at 3-3, and soon took the lead 4-3 after a defensive miscue by the Irish. Taylor did Taylor things to tie the game back up at 4-4 with a crazy twister, followed by a goal by Busenkell to give the Irish back the lead. Another long lull in the scoring brought the teams to halftime with the Irish up 5-4. 

Maryland opened up the second half to tie it up at 5-5 before scoring again to reclaim the lead.The Terps built their lead with another goal after sloppiness on both sides. A goal from Taylor closed the Maryland lead to 1. A quick response from the Terps extended their lead back out to 2 going into the final quarter of play. 

CKav opened up the scoring in the fourth with an incredible crease dive to reduce the gap to 1 off a feed from Angrick. The Terps quickly extended the lead back to  2 after a sloppy offsides penalty against the Irish, before adding another making it a 3 goal lead. CKav began to take control of the offense as only he can, scoring 2 goals in a minute to reduce the deficit to 1. Yet again, Maryland responded quickly in devastating fashion by scoring while man down to bring the lead to 2. The final two minutes were dominated by the Irish with Faison getting his second of the day closing it to one and a face-off win by Lynch to give the Irish the chance to tie it up. After a back and forth possession, CKav beat his man to the inside but McNaney makes the crazy (and in full honesty a bit lucky) save with his foot to ice the game for the Terps.

The Scoring

The final score tally was 4 goals for CKav, 3 goals and an assist for Taylor, an assist for Angrick, a goal and 2 assists for Busenkell, an assist for McLane, 2 goals for Faison, and an assist for Maheras and Seymour. 

Thomas Ricciardelli had 9 saves and LSM Will Donavan led defenders with 2 ground balls and 2 caused turnovers.

Will Lynch was incredible, going 16 of 22 at the faceoff dot, including perfect first and fourth quarters. Colin Hagstrom was perfect in his two attempts in reserve.

The Irish also dominated in shots (43-29) and ground balls (37-19, 19-13 excluding faceoffs). The boys were on the wrong side of the turnover margin (17-13).

Very clearly the most significant stat line of the game was Logan McNaney’s 17 saves, which included one off his foot to save a potential game-tying shot by CKav with seconds left in the game. Will Schaller’s heroics eluded the stat sheet but will be mentioned here. He sacrificed his body to save a Matt Jeffrey open-net shot, and they secured possession on a run-out in the final seconds of the game to seal the win for the Terps.

Our Pregame Questions

Let’s review our discussion points going into the game:

  1. Slowing them down: Our defense honestly did a pretty good job against this Terps team. Outside of 2 runs of 3 goals, they kept them in check especially in the first half. The one problem they were having was in the transition game, with the several Maryland fast-break goals exploiting communication issues being the difference in the game. Transition goals aren’t necessarily the fault of the defense, but the Irish need to find ways to steal a few from their opponent.
  2. Keeping Up production: This is where we ended up struggling more than anticipated. Our offense dominated the first and last 3 minute stretches, but had some struggles in the middle. There were long stretches where the boys repeated unoriginal dodges and the coaches struggled with finding the ideal line-up on the field. Most notably these struggles are shown by the shot on goal percentage. The boys had an amazing 43 shots (compared to the Terps 29) but only 62% were on cage.
  3. Staying focused: This was again another struggle for us. To highlight a positive, the boys won a majority of the stat battles, which is an improvement, most notably in the ground ball category that they won 37-19. However, they just looked sloppy. The eye test may be too subjective, but even from a data perspective we see the crucial 3 off-sides turnovers that just simply can’t happen, the 17 total turnovers, the shot on goal percentage, and the overall shooting percentage that in all honesty puffed up McNaney’s early save percentage with shots directly into his stick.

Pros and Cons/Moving Forward

While we have certainly emphasized a few bad things, that doesn’t mean any Irish fan should be worried. Once again we give a huge shout out to Lynch. He went 75% on the day, winning every first quarter and fourth quarter draw on his way there. With the possession advantage he gives us, there is simply no reason we shouldn’t expect to win every game. 

Another big shout out goes to Ricciardelli. He was just below 50% but only allowing 11 on this high powered Maryland team is great, especially considering many of their goals were in transition which are not his fault. 

One last shout out goes to everyone on the team. They certainly got a lot more cleaned up from the Georgetown game. They returned to their normal selves in the ground balls which is the most important stat, and in total shots which is arguably one of the 3 most important line items.

All that said, there is still lots of work to do. Whether it’s the dropped passes that gave Maryland the ball back, the offsides penalties that, honestly, come purely off not being focused, or simply getting frustrated and playing hero ball on offense, these can’t happen against opponents like this. But, we know that this team can do better. 

The reason we expect so much from this team and are so hard on them is because we know how good they can be. 

While this loss stinks, it is early in the season. In the long run this doesn’t mean all that much, especially as it was against the #2 team (now #1). We have complete faith in coach Corrigan to get these guys back to where they need to be and turn them into the amazing team they are destined to be. 

How they decide to move forward will be interesting, though. Throughout the game they changed up the attack line a lot, most notably with McLane noticeable playing a lot of minutes down there as opposed to midfield at the expense of Pokorny and Behrman. It will be interesting to see who they keep down with CKav and Taylor. 

On a similar note, this is a completely different brand of offense than what we have seen these past few years, and especially last year. Obviously losing PKav will be hard to replace, but the loss of Dobson appears to be the biggest adjustment. Without an established stretch shooter on the field, it is more difficult to spread the defense and allow players like CKav, Taylor, and Faison to activate themselves and score the amount we are used to them scoring. There are other ways to create space, but it seems they are having some difficulty keeping defenses honest. Maryland was comfortable staying back and covering adjacents.  We didn’t see that very much last year.

How will this change?  If they decide to try and go back to the concepts that worked last year, they will need to call on players like Jalen Seymour and Fisher Finley to become that stretch shooting threat that keeps defenses from hedging to the interior. On the flip side, it may just be a question of tinkering with the lineup combinations and finding the most effective roles for Faison and Jeffery who are just now being inserted into the offense. In truth, we aren’t entirely sure of what could be done to make space for them outside of crafting another Dobson, but the roster is loaded with talent and options for the coaching staff. In the end, the decision is up to coach Corrigan and we have complete faith in him. We can stand here on our soapbox and say as much as we want, but in truth coach Corrigan knows what the team needs better than anyone, and we trust him 100%. 

Looking forward, after a week long break to practice and fix up things, the Irish take on Ohio State back home in Arlotta which is shaping up to be a good one! 

Go Irish!

ND-Atl 2.0