Notre Dame Fighting Irish lacrosse (#7  5-3, 1-1 ACC) beat ACC rival Syracuse (#11 5-3, 1-2 ACC) at home, 13-10.  An 11-goal first half was all the Irish needed for victory.  Notre Dame also showed a lot of growth as a team in holding off an Orange comeback in the 2nd half.

The Scoring and the Data

Bryan Costabile had an incredible 5 goals, including 2 late goals to ice the game and stop a Syracuse run in its tracks.  Gleason had 3 goals and an assist before leaving the game with an injury (more on this later), while Jackoboice added 2 goals and 2 assists.  Morin an McCahon each had a goal and an assist, Willets had a goal, and Westlin an assist.

Jamie Trimboli paced the Orangemen with three goals and an assist.

Jack Kielty’s 7 ground balls stood out in the defensive statistics.  Leonard was challenged on Saturday going 10 of 25 at faceoff-x.  Schmidt had 6 saves, and Zullo came in for the final 8+ minutes in relief.

Syracuse outshot the Irish, 45-33, but struggled to put the ball on cage, where the Irish enjoyed a big advantage, 24-17.  Syracuse was also far sloppier with the ball, turning it over 23 times to Notre Dame’s 16.  The Orange had more ground balls, 38 to 31.

Clears were near perfect for both teams, and both teams did well man-up (SU 2-3, ND 4-6)

Syracuse had slightly more possession (41 to 39), but Notre Dame had 33% efficiency while holding Syracuse to 24%.  Both teams played somewhat quickly, going to the cage on average 32.5 seconds into their possessions.

The Plot

Costabile and Gleason opened the scoring for Notre Dame, and the Irish continued to score with some ease throughout the first half, with Syracuse unable to mount any sort of response.  The Irish extended their lead to as many as 9 goals before finishing the half up 11-3.

Syracuse was not able to organize much of a defensive response, and as the Irish lead increased, the Orange became more thuggish in their efforts to stop the scoring.  Tyson Bomberry started the headhunting and earned two penalties in the first half.

The Irish offense lost its mojo in the 3rd quarter, with Syracuse closing the gap, albeit slowly.  The thugishness continued, with Brett Kennedy participating in the goonery, taking out Brendan Gleason with an intentional check to the head, knocking Gleason out of the game.

Fortunately for the Irish, Costabile took back control of the game with two late goals, effectively stopping the Syracuse run before it got too close to the Irish total.

The 3rd quarter offensive doldrums frightened a fan or two, but the Irish ultimately won comfortably.

Our Pregame Questions

We identified a few issues we thought may be of significance in this match:

  1. 60 minutes:   The first 30 minutes were solid, as were the last 10, but the middle 20 had us worried for a bit.  Fortunately, the boys only grabbed an appetizer portion from the pasta bar at halftime. They were able to shake it off long before the Syracuse run had the potential of putting the outcome in danger.
  2. Turnovers:  16 isn’t a great total, but it was far less than Syracuse, and given the iffy weather conditions at the start of the game, probably not something to get too upset about.  It’s still something that the boys should look to improve.
  3. Willets’ shot:   The team as a whole shot well, Willets included.  They just didn’t get him the ball like they did last week against Ohio State.  Perhaps this had something to do with the Syracuse defensive plan, but the Irish weren’t inverting the field or running the types of plays that usually result in the tall attackman getting the ball and a good look.  We’ll keep this on the list for the upcoming Duke game where the Irish are likely to have a better opportunity to get him the ball.

Notes

We do not have news on Gleason’s condition or availability next week.  The hit he took was gruesome, and the referee staff was woefully inept in only penalizing Kennedy for a minute.  There must be no room in this game for this kind of nonsense, and we name the names responsible:  Bomberry, Kennedy and Mellen.  One thuggish hit can sometimes be excused as misguided enthusiasm.  When it happens over and over again, it’s part of their plan, and they should be ashamed of themselves.  Headhunting does not hide the fact that your defensive technique was garbage.  It is unfortunate that the ACC and NCAA have no mechanism to review these plays.  We apologize for carrying on like this, but they made a intentional efforts to take out our boys.

A criticism we must note is that the second midfield didn’t make much of an impact in the game.  The reserve midfield must find ways to contribute in these ACC conference games.  They’ve been playing  well all season, so the assumption is that this past week was just a blip and not a regression.

We’re glad Zullo got a chance to show what he can do, but it was unclear to us why Schmidt was taken out of the game.  The broadcast camera work was less than ideal, so it simply may be something that wasn’t evident on TV, but it’s our goalie bias that you don’t take out a guy and put in a cold goalie unless you have to.

There was a lot of growth in this game.  The team is young, and they are still learning how to win consistently.  They already knew how to build a lead, but Saturday they learned a bit more on how to solidify the lead and bring it home. This is a very good thing that will help the Irish in the second half of the season.

Up Next

The Irish travel to Durham to take on #8 Duke on Saturday.  Duke has lost two in a row but can be counted on to get back on course.  Let there be no mistake, there is a reason why the Blue Devils were the preseason #1, and the Irish must be very diligent in their preparations.

 

Thanks again to LacrosseReference.com for being generous with their stats.

#GoIrish