#1 Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse (6-0) host its ACC rival #3 Virginia (6-1) at Arlotta Stadium this Saturday at noon (ESPNU). Notre Dame’s ruthless efficiency against the Cavaliers’ insane offense. Virginia may have the best offense in the country, but it is facing the equally insane balance of the #2 offense/#2 defense of Notre Dame.
This will be the first of two games against the Cavaliers. The boys will travel for a rematch in Charlottesville for the penultimate game of the regular season.
credit: lacrossereference.com
These two teams are more than statistical outliers, they are on their own planets.
The Opponent
The Hoos have ranked victories over Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Ohio State, but lost last weekend at home in overtime to Maryland, 13-14.
Coach Lars Tiffany’s Virginia is designed to be relentless on offense. Not only are they blessed with a top offensive unit, their defensive philosophy is to prioritize creation of offensive opportunities. The net result is an insane 44% scoring efficiency when they make a stop on the defensive end. These are soul-crushing figures. You miss your shot and they are scoring going the other way. It is a constant battle for an offense to avoid a 2 point swing if one doesn’t make a perfect choice on offense. They are willing to leak a few points on defense knowing the cumulative effect of their opponent’s errors is a losing math equation for them.
Petey LaSalla at faceoff present a substantial problem for the Irish. He wins at a 59% rate, but is also a scoring threat in his own right with 33 career goals. He creates a mismatch that pins the opponent’s faceoff player on the defensive end creating all sorts of organizational problems for the defense who are then playing a 5-man rotation instead of 6. He will test the adaptability of the Notre Dame defense.
On defense, the Cavaliers are simply huge. As noted above, they may not be the most efficient defense, but 6’7″ Cole Kastner and 6’5″ Cade Saustad take up a lot of space, clog the passing lanes, cause a lot of turnovers, and get the ball going the other direction in a hurry. Goalie Matt Nunes is saving a pinch under 50% for the season.
Connor Shellenberger is the leader of the Virginia attack (12g, 26a), and he is having another All-American year. Their goal scoring depth is impressive with Dickson (26g), McConvey (16g), Cormier (21g), Schutz (11g) and McIntosh (12g). These guys are also all huge.
Again, what Virginia will try to do is no secret: overwhelm the Irish early and keep the game out of reach with relentless pressure.
Series Moments
Notre Dame is 8-9 all time versus Virginia. The boys have lost the last four in this series and got roughed up last year in Charlottesville 8-12, but the Irish have not lost a game to anyone since.
The series has some all-time classic Irish lacrosse moments, including the Ryder Garnsey overtime win and dead fish celly, and Sergio’s overtime hammer in South Bend.
But our favorite remains the overtime faceoff scrum that led to the Perkovic goal. Coach Corrigan gambled everything by double-poling the faceoff wings with two of Notre Dame’s all-time greats, Matt Landis and John Sexton. Ground Ball Jesus emerged with the ball to set up the winning play. It was a beautiful effort by some of the best players we’ve ever seen, who knew the gamble was certain to result in a loss if they weren’t successful.
What to expect
Rain, Snow and 40 mph wind gusts will greet the players. The Irish are used to horrible weather and thrive in it. And we’re sure nothing will temper the festival atmosphere.
We go into the game with some uncertainty not knowing the injury status of key midfielder Quinn McCahon. He left the Michigan game early nursing an apparent arm injury and there hasn’t been a report since.
The to-dos for this game are very straight forward:
- Survive the first 10 minutes: The boys know what’s coming and what Virginia hopes to do. The Irish need to play disciplined defense from the start and not rely too much on Entenmann to steady the ship.
- Score efficiently: Notre Dame is the #2 offense in terms of efficiency going against the #59 defense. The Irish should be able to score effectively, but they can’t waste possessions or make poor shot choices as the greatest Cavalier weapon is their counter-attack. The best way to blunt the counter-attack is to make it impossible by scoring.
- Find possessions: The Irish faceoff unit continues to improve, but statistically speaking some disadvantage at faceoff is expected. As we’ve noted the past few week, the boys need to limit the deficit and find extra possessions elsewhere. The encouraging news is that the team has been doing exactly this the past few weeks. This team must continue to make the hustle plays they are known for.
We are very excited for this game.
Drew Brennan’s Exit 77 podcast as a great mid season review of this team.
#GoIrish
Coupled with the women’s team falling on their face after the 3rd quarter media timeout, a very dispiriting couple of hours for ND athletics
Result was disappointing, but it means a lot to the lacrosse people that the other ND athletes came out and created a great atmosphere for the boys
As for the game, good news is that there are a lot of fixable problems. Looking forward to rematch in Charlottesville (after they drop a 20 piece on ‘Cuse next week).
It was very cool to see other teams show up in support!
I would not want to be Syracuse right now haha
PKav absolutely lit up ‘Cuse the last three meeting and it doesn’t appear they’ll have a solution to an angry PKav this go around. Marks is a great goalie and they have A+ young talent at attack, but that doesn’t solve the problem Cuse needs solved.
So what’s the likely poll order? ND, Virginia, and Maryland are now all 1-1 against each other.
This means they rank Florida State number 1
Lol
Duke has entered the chat, too. Recency bias probably means ND gets dumped to #4, but we’ll see.
#3 behind Maryland. Annoying. Really looking forward to smoking Syracuse this week.
100%. Big wins at the Dome are extremely satisfying.
After seeing Ohio State pants Rutgers last night, it’s clear that ND/UVa/MD/Duke exist in a different lacrosse universe from the other 68 D1 teams. We’ll see the order scrambled a bit the rest of the season. Still chafe at MD ranked #2, as though they didn’t get drubbed by Loyola. Whatever.