Up next for #10 Notre Dame Fighting Irish lacrosse (2-1) is the Western Rivalry against the #17 Denver Pioneers (3-2), this Saturday at noon, Arlotta Stadium.  Sunny skies and 48 degree temps are in the forecast. The game will be broadcast on the ACC Network, with Paul Carcaterra and Mike Golic, Jr. on the call.

This will be the 13th meeting since 2010, the most games between two non-conference opponents in lacrosse during this period.  In this stretch, Notre Dame and Denver played a total of 7 overtime periods in 5 overtime games. 8 games have been decided by two goals or less.

The Opponent

The Pios are led by Coach Bill Tierney, who in his career has amassed 8 national championships (1 with Denver) and over 400 wins.  Denver has wins over Air Force, St. Bonaventure and Cleveland State, with loses to Duke and North Carolina, both with a score of 13-15.

Ethan Walker (11 g, 8a) is the name Irish fans will recall from prior games.  Junior Jack Hannah (15g, 8a) joins him at the top of the Denver scoring leaderboard.  Senior Danny Logan (12 gb, 6 ct) returns as one of the top SSDMs in the country.  Both teams have their share of Culver Academy grads, among the ones on the Denver roster is freshman FOGO Alex Stathakis who has been winning draws at a .583 rate.

The Pios haven’t really settled on a goalie with Cole French and Josh Matte each getting early season starts, but Jack Thompson is their most recent starter having played the whole game against North Carolina last week.

We struggle to describe Denver’s identity.  Any team coached by Bill Tierney will be good, Ethan Walker is still great,  the defense around Danny Logan is very good, and they scored a ton of goals against Notre Dame’s ACC rivals Duke and North Carolina.  We’re grateful Baptiste graduated, but Stathakis is a highly-regarded prospect.  At the end of the day, Denver and Notre Dame know each other well, and we can assume they will defend solidly.  If the Irish press Ethan Walker and try to deny him a lefty shot up top, they’ll quickly move the ball behind the Irish defense.  There aren’t many secrets here.

Last year the Irish beat Denver 10-7 at the Pacific Coast Shootout in Costa Mesa, California.

Our Pregame Questions

This game is always at or near the top of our list when the schedule comes out. We just hope for fans on the berm, a good game, and a good win.  If we have to look for three things to indicate that good win is going to happen, they’d be:

  1. Take care of the ball:  Don’t put the ball on the carpet, clear effectively, get the ball off the ground.  These simple things make all the difference.
  2. End possessions:  Get the ball out of the defensive end!  As we were reminded last week, time of possession matters.  We believe strongly that long stretches on defense lead to hesitant possessions on offense for fear of putting the defense back in too quickly, but the opposite is true as well!  Make them burn the shot clock and only double team if you can make them put the ball on the ground. Efficient defense leads to transition pressure, which leads to confident offense.
  3. Offensive pressure:  Will we see unrelenting pressure on offense like we did in the Richmond game?  50 shots would be good, 55-60 would be much better. Attack the cage with confidence.

There are plenty of other thing we could list, but for this game we just want to see these basic elements and for the fans to have a good time.

Let us know your thoughts going into this game!

#GoIrish