The playoff run of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish lacrosse team ended last weekend in an overtime loss to Duke, 13-14.  It was a tough way for the boys to go out.

The Scoring and the Data

Ryder Garnsey led Irish scorers with 4 goals and 2 assists.  Brian Willets had a hat trick to finish the season on a consistent upward trajectory, while Bryan Costabile finished a stellar junior year with 2 goals and 2 assists.  Gleason finished his great career with 2 goals. Hallenbeck added a goal and an assist, Jackoboice a goal, and McCahon and Phillips provided and assist each.

Faceoffs were even 15-15, Notre Dame led in shots 42-40, but were slightly on the wrong side of ground balls, 25-30, and turnovers, 15-13.

Notre Dame was excellent man-up, going 3 of 4.

Matt Schmidt had 11 saves, and Kielty stood out on the defensive stat line with 3 ground balls and 2 shots.

C.J. Carpenter and Joe Robertson each had hat trick for Duke.

It stats were as even as the OT result would suggest.  We’ll note that when it comes to efficiency, it was offenses that enjoyed their time in the sun.  Few predicted that!

The Plot

It was a classic game of runs.  Duke jumped out to a 4-goal lead, only to have the Irish respond to tie it up behind goals from Willets, Garnsey and Jackoboice.  Duke jumped out again, but the boys replied to tie it up 7-7 early in the 3rd quarter.

Then Duke went on another run to go up 8-11, but the boys heroically responded, this time inching ahead 12-11 with 7:00 minutes left in the game.  Duke answered with two more to take a small lead, but Ryder Garnsey found Brian Willetts for the tying score with 1:24 on the clock.

The Irish secured the ball on the next faceoff and held for the last shot.  They got a few hard chances off a Garnsey dodge, but the game went to overtime.

Duke won the OT faceoff, but the Irish held firm on defense throughout the possession.  Unfortunately, as the shot clock was about to expire and return the ball to the Irish, Duke’s Joe Robertson snuck in a bouncer for the win.

HIGHLIGHTS

Accolades

The season is coming to a close which makes it award time.  Bryan Costabile finished his fantastic Junior season being named a USILA 1st team All-American.  Jack Kietly and Brendan Gleason were recognized as an honorable mention selections.  Along with Arden Cohen, Kielty will form what will be the strongest back-line duo in college lacrosse in 2020.  Finally, Atlanta’s Charlie Trense was awarded the Monogram Club Postgraduate Scholarship!  We understand he will be attended a Notre Dame graduate program, so hopefully we’ll see him on the field one more season!

A Note From Our Resident Goalies

We are disappointed to read a lot of grief given to Matt Schmidt on the message boards and Twitter.  We may not know a whole lot about the facing a Bryan Costabile shot, but we know a good bit about off-speed bouncers like that which won the game for Duke.  They tend to stick in FieldTurf and don’t come out consistently.  They are very difficult to judge correctly and save, especially on the stick side.  Please cut him some slack and support him like his teammates did.  It was a very challenging shot to handle.

Our Seniors

We say farewell to several of our seniors: Brendon Gleason, Charlie Trense, Hugh Crance,  Ryder Garnsey, Nick Stinn, Drew Schantz, Timmy Phillips, Mike Marchese, Mitch Olinger, Brooks Tyrrell, Michael Langdon, and Jack Beare.  Making it to the quarterfinals kept alive the beautiful tradition of the road graduation, with Notre Dame’s own Mike Golic as their speaker.  Congratulations to all our graduates!

We hope to get a post up in the coming weeks celebrating our seniors and where they land, whether in the workforce or on the pro lacrosse field.

And we got to see the end of Ryder’s career at Notre Dame, where he scored 83 goals, none of them “normal”.

Other

  • ND-Atl 2.0 plans another series this summer on 18 Stripes focusing on Domers in the MLL and PLL.
  • We will also try to post updates on our incoming freshman as they complete their high school and club careers.
  • Speaking of the incoming freshmen, 6 have been invited to try out for Team USA u19. Past members of that team include Costabile and Kavanagh, so we are hopeful another of the boys gets such a valuable opportunity.
  • Thank you for following us this season and Go Irish!