#6 seed Notre Dame Fighting Irish Lacrosse (8-3) will face the #3 seed and undefeated Maryland Terrapins (13-0) at Arlotta Stadium this Sunday at 2:30, ESPNU. Without a doubt it will be the marquee game of the NCAA tournament quarterfinals.

It gets very real for the Irish this weekend.

History

The all-time series is knotted up at 6-6.  Maryland won the most recent meeting during the Covid-19 shortened 2020 season, 14-9 in College Park.  The Irish won in OT in Loftus in 2019, and the Terps won in College Park in 2018.

The four games prior to these were all won by the Irish in rock fights.

In 2010, Notre Dame also played a #3 seed Maryland team in the NCAA quarterfinals, and won 7-5 on their way to their first championship game appearance.

The Opponent

Maryland is a deep and talented team.  They aren’t undefeated by accident, and like the Irish are incredibly balanced.

The are led by Tewaraaton Award finalist Jared Bernhardt, who has been nearly unstoppable with a whopping 59 goals on 114 shots, along with 23 assists, this season.

Also on the attack is Logan Wisnauskas who has had 31 goals and 28 assists.  Wisnauskas tormented the Irish in their 2020 meeting. Their attack is rounded off by Daniel Maltz with 37 goals.  Simply an incredible amount of production this season from their attack line.

On the defensive end, Brett Makar and Nick Grill are among the best in the country.

We’ll add a shout-out for Atlanta’s Eric Malever, who as a freshman is effective on their second midfield line.

Logan McNaney has saved 52% of the shots he has faced to a 9.54 goals against average. Faceoff responsibilities continue to be handled by Justin Shockey with some help from Nick Wierman.  As a team, they win slightly less than half their draws.

The teams rides effectively, only allowing 82% of their clears.

Of note, their man-down defense does give up goals at a 39% rate. This may be an area of opportunity for the Irish.

The challenge with Maryland is that no one is quite sure how good the Big 10 was this season.  The Terps took care of business in the league and are impressive statistically and with the eye test. We’ll know a lot more after the Saturday quarterfinals when we see Rutgers play.  Maryland manhandled the Scarlet Knights twice.  If Rutgers shows their worth, we’ll know with certainty the Irish will have their hands full.

In any event, both Maryland and Notre Dame both have reason to be sore they are playing each other so early in the tournament.

Our Questions

  1. 13 goals: As we noted last week, this appears to be the magic number for the Irish.  Not that they can’t win with a lower total, but there’s a whole lot less worry with this total being defended by Kielty and company.
  2. Faceoffs: On paper, the Irish have the upper hand, but we can’t ignore that Shockey won the battle with Leonard last year.  Still, this is an area where Notre Dame hopes to gain a clear possession advantage. This season, Maryland has seemed perfectly happy winning 45% or better in their game plan.  It will be up to the Irish faceoff unit to well exceed this and disrupt their strategy.
  3. Turnovers:  Maryland is far too efficient an offense (38%) to give them any extra possessions.  Clears need to be disciplined and the Irish need to take care of the ball.
  4. Defensive Titans:  Both teams have amazing talent and hold opponents to 22% efficiency. Even in this shot clock era, there’s a good chance the defenses will make this an old fashioned rock fight.
  5. Midfield: There is a good chance Maryland will look to shut off Kavanagh and Westlin, looking to take their chances with the Irish midfield.  It will be up to both lines of midfielders to run past their defenders and generate offense.  They need to make the Terps realize this is a mistake and force them into decisions on who to cover.

Stuff

Great weather, albeit a bit warm, is forecast this Sunday.  The campus will be buzzing as graduation will be going on that afternoon as well.  Congratulation to all our graduates, on the team and across campus!

We hope the managers have something special planned with the uniforms.  It will be strange with the Irish technically the visiting team at Arlotta. If it were up to us, we’d suggest the blue jersey/white shorts combo that has served the team well in tournament play.

#GoIrish