The #2 Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse team (5-0) trampled the #10 Ohio State Buckeyes (3-3) by a 16-3 score. The boys started great and just got better and better as the game progressed.

Notre Dame completely reversed the 2022 script by going 3-0 through the difficult Georgetown-Maryland-Ohio State stretch, and have won 11 games in a row going back to last year.

The Scoring

We are switching the order because who did the scoring really illustrates what happened in this game.

Ten goal scorers.  Eric Dobson hammered home 4 goals and an assist. CKav 3 had goals and 2 assists, with PKav adding 2 goals and 2 assists. Quinn McCahon (1g, 2a) and Griffin Westlin (1g, 1a) were also multi-point scorers. Walker, Bayman, Simmons, Tevlin, and Taylor each added a goal, and Ramsey an assist. That’s 8 goals from the attack, 7 from the midfield, and 1 from a hybrid player that fits both roles. It would be hard to script a balanced offense any better than this.

On the defensive end, the boys once again caused double-digit turnovers with 14. Conlin led the way with 3, but 12 Irish got involved.  Again, a balanced, team effort. The team had 37 ground balls across seventeen players.

Even in faceoffs there were multiple contributors. The Irish won 13 of 22, with Lynch winning 11 of 18, and Hagstrom securing a very helpful 2 of 4.

In solo stats, goalie Liam Entenmann saved an incredible 13 of the 16 shots he faced. Alex Zepf saved the only shot he faced in relief.

Clears weren’t a big issue for either team, but the turnover gap leaned heavily towards Notre Dame, 11-20.  The Irish took care of the ball.

Man-up was a perfect 2 of 2, and man-down only allowed 1 of 3.

For Ohio State, goalie Skylar Wahlund had a great game with 14 saves.  He kept it from becoming much, much worse.

Our friends at lacrossereference.com calculated that Notre Dame was 38.1% efficient on offense, while holding Ohio State to 8.8.%!  Offensive pacing to first shot was a deliberate 37.1 seconds. The Irish were surgical.

32 Irish saw the field, including 3 freshmen (Donovan, Alacqua and Busenkell).

The Plot

If you ask us, the game was won in the pregame, when Brian Tevlin joined Ross Burgmaster for the traditional bagpipe lead-out. We’re not sure if there has been a moment in this decades-long tradition this awesome.

Once again, Eric Dobson got the boys on the scoreboard early.

Jason Knox responded for the Buckeyes during a CKav penalty, which preceded a long scoring drought by both teams.  To be fair, the Buckeyes tested Entenmann and the defense during this stretch. The boys did a great job shutting down Ohio State star Jack Myers, but took a moment to contain the rest of the team.

Chris Kavanagh and Bryce Walker added goals late in the quarter to put the Irish up 3-1 at the end of the first.

CKav added a second goal early the next quarter.  Ohio State responded midway through the quarter for there last goal for the next 28 minutes of the game.  The Irish, in turn were finding their range, with Wahlund doing this best to hold them back until Simmons scored to put the Irish up 5-2 at the half and looking poised to make a breakout.

What happened in the third can only be described as scorched earth by the Irish. Dobson unloaded twice to start the scoring, and the boys proceeded to pound the Buckeyes every which way. 14 shots, 12 on goal. The Irish scored 7 total, including Taylor’s first of the year.  But for Wahlund’s heroic efforts (5 saves) on many premium Irish opportunities, the disaster would have been historic.  The quarter ended with Notre Dame up 12-2.

Notre Dame kept their foot on the gas for most of the fourth as they introduced new players into the mix, until Alex Zepf was inserted in goal to guide the team home with a 16-3 win.

Our Pregame Questions

A+ across the board.

  1. Control Jack Myers:  The Irish blanked the All-American completely. 0 goals, 0 assists, 0 ground balls, 4 shots.
  2. Don’t let Van Buren and Hudgins dictate: Both had good games, but the ball moved too well and the offense was too multiple for their efforts to do more than make the Irish a bit more patient.
  3. Continue faceoff and possession improvement: The boys made a big jump from last week in winning 60%. 11 total turnovers and no complications in the clear game were also steep improvements.  Well done across the board.

Thoughts

We share many of the thoughts of our friend Drew Brennan. The Irish were excellent in all facets of the game, and agree that the defense has really gelled, that Ramsey has been a revelation, and that a free from injury Jose Boyer has finally got his chance to shine.

There were a few scribbles we kept from our rewatch of the game that we thought were worth sharing:

  • Past Irish offenses were often accused of being perhaps too dependent on an alpha, or being one-dimensional generally.  It’s tough to say if this group is simply far more multi-dimensional, or if it has 8 Alphas, or a bit of both. It is such a luxury to have such a long list of players who are capable of blowing the game wide open on their own, yet it never feels like the team has any need to go in this direction.
  • The defense is purposefully aggressive and recovers so well. It’s great yet it improves so consistently week over week. It’s amazing that it was essentially rebuilt from scratch this year.
  • Even the faceoff unit is becoming multiple.  Hagstrom has become a great change of pace option that plays to the strengths of our wings.
  • It incredible to think that as Taylor gets more minutes that the offense may have even higher gears to shift through. He’s an elite closer, of course, but we wish there was a stat for the disruption he causes to the defensive organization.
  • Conlin is such a great complimentary player. He liberates the others to be aggressive by anticipating so many passes the opponents try to fire through the middle.
  • Ricciardelli is getting great looks and taking great shots. Opponent goalies are having to make A+ efforts to contain him.
  • There have been a few things written about Dobson’s shooting percentage. For our part, we are okay with it as he develops a right hand shot to compliment his left.  But the Ohio State game shows what happens if a defense is not prepared to force him to go to his right. Sheesh.
  • Having multiple elite 2-way midfielders in McCahon and Tevlin is beyond luxurious.

Up Next

Refocus for Michigan week.  The Irish travel to Ann Arbor for a 1:00 pm Saturday game (BTN+). There are no breaks for the Irish.  The #20 Wolverines (4-2) are building a good resume and will be very difficult to beat on the road.  The gave #1 Virginia a tough game and comfortably beat Delaware and Harvard on the road.  The attack line of Boehm, Cohen and Zawada are putting up big numbers, and their faceoff tandem is formidable.  Anything less than a 100% focused effort will be a problem against that team.

#GoIrish