Notre Dame Fighting Irish lacrosse (9-5) thumped Army West Point (5-8) 17-5 on Saturday afternoon.  13 different Irish players scored goals, and 16 total had points on this year’s Senior Day.

The Scoring

We can’t recall when we’ve had to list this many names in the scoring summary!

Goals:  Gleason 4, Komatz 2, Collins 2, Garnsey, Sexton, Wynne, Costabile, Walter, McNamara, Stinn, Gayhardt, and Fay.  Assists:  Garnsey 2, Gleason 2, Byrne, Jackoboice, Komatz, Ruhl, Sexton And Wynne.

Schmidt may 7 saves and allowed only 3 goals in his 51 minutes on the field.  Sexton continue to pace the ground ball effort with 4 GBs, and Travisano had another good day at faceoff, going 12-16.  His understudies were great, too, with Frane going 5-5 and Leonard going 4-6.

Other players not mentioned above that saw the field were Molloy, Hurdle, Young, Littlefield, Farnish, Cassidy, Blommer, Trense, Phillips, Hadley, Schantz, Olinger, Milikin, Menke, Gaiss, Chase, Crance, Cohen, Kielty, and Willets.  To our count, 39 Fighting Irish players saw the field.

The Plot

Mikey Wynne opened the scoring several minutes into the game from an assist from Ryder Garnsey.  Nick Stinn scored unassisted a few minutes later, followed by a beautiful strip, ground ball and coast-to-coast goal from Sexton.  Soon after, the floodgates opened and Irish scored at will.  In the fourth quarter Notre Dame had an opportunity to play deep into the roster, and they used their opportunities very well, particularly Keaton Komatz, who had two goals and an assist.

It’s NCAA Tournament Time!

14-11, 17-7, 17-5.  The Irish could not be heading into the tournament more on fire than they are.  They are healthy and firing on all cylinders.

Still, there was the mid-season doldrums to take into account, so the NCAA seeding committee slotted the Irish into the 7th seed.  They will host rival Denver on Sunday at 2:15, winner to play the victor of Albany vs. Richmond in Hempstead, NY the following week.   Denver limps into the tournament having lost to Georgetown in the Big East Conference final, but it’s one more time the Irish will have to face Trevor Baptiste and that will always keep us awake at night.

We’ll get a preview posted this week.

#GoIrish