Dame Fighting Irish mens’ lacrosse (5-1, 1-1 ACC) thumped the Syracuse Orangemen, 18-11 (4-3, 1-2 ACC) on Easter weekend at the Carrier Dome Kavanagh Field.

The Scoring

Wow. Sophomore Pat Kavanagh had a ridiculous 4 goals and 5 assists in his first visit to the Dome, tying his brother’s 9-point record on this same field in 2016.  Every one of Pat’s points was incredible, but none more than this beauty:

Three of Kav’s assists went to Will Yorke, who finished with 4 goals on the day.  Griffin Westlin matched him with 4 of his own.

Freshman Eric Dobson continued his great first season with 2 goals, and senior captain Wheaton Jackoboice added a goal and 2 assists.

McCahon, Mirer and Leonard had a goal each, and Gallagher, Leahey and Hallenbeck had an assist each.

The tandem of Leonard and Gallagher were key to the Irish domination by going 23 of 32 at faceoff.

Kyle Thorton’s stat line stuck out once again with a ground ball and 2 caused turnovers, as did SSDM Nick Harris’ 3 gbs and 2 caused turnovers.

Entenmann recovered from a difficult first quarter to make 10 saves for the game.

Elsewhere in the box score, the Irish domination was evident in the 45-20 ground ball advantage, and in going 4 of 6 when man-up.

One of the few areas of concern were the Irish’s 16 turnovers.

Our friends at Lacrossereference.com observed that Notre Dame had a massive possession and time of possession advantage; 47-34 and 65.5%-34.5%. Efficiency was better than Syracuse as well, 38.3% to 32.4%.

For the Orange, Stephen Rehfuss continued to impress with a hat trick on the day.

The Plot

To be honest, the Irish gave us a scare to start the game.  Gallagher won the opening faceoff, but much like last week, Notre Dame struggled to convert some very good looks.  On the other side, Syracuse gave the Irish a lot of trouble dodging from X and with inverts.  Some uncharacteristically poor footwork and communication on defense did not help the Irish cause, and the Orange were up 6-2 a minute into the 2nd quarter.

Then the Irish got rolling and took the lead on 5 straight goals. ‘Cuse scored 2 to briefly retake the lead, but the Irish rattled off 4 more to go into the half up 11-8.  Notre Dame’s dominance in ground balls and faceoffs was clearly starting to take its toll on their opponent.  Pat Kavanagh, in particular, carved up the Syracuse defense, but the Irish were finding success from all parts of the field.

Notre Dame drove their lead to 14-8.  The Orangemen tried to mount a comeback, but Will Yorke provided a 3 goal counter-attack to bring the score to its final 18-11 with 9 minutes left in the game.  The Irish took the air out of the ball from that point on, and an exhausted Syracuse couldn’t put anything together to try to close the gap.  Notre Dame was content to bring the party to a close and go home with an important ACC road win.

Our Notes

The final score hides a few things.  The Irish did struggle to start the game, and the Orange did mount a few decent comeback attempts.  If we are being fair, as we noted above, Notre Dame had a few early game issues that were almost their undoing.  The defense struggled to deal with the Syracuse dodgers, particularly from X, footwork wasn’t great, and the Irish often released their ball pressure at bad times and gave their opponents great looks at Entenmann.  Entenmann himself struggled a bit, too, having what seemed like difficulty getting post to post.

The great news is that Notre Dame solved these problems.  Defensive communication improved a lot as the game progressed, ball pressure got more intense, and Entenmann settled down and went back into cyborg mode.  To improve like this mid-game on the road is very impressive. The Carrier Dome is a very tough place to play.

The game commentators noted that Coach Corrigan said he wouldn’t have swapped offensive looks with Virginia last week at all.  We agree now as we did last week.  The offense is moving the ball well, and against Syracuse we got a glimpse of what it is like when the shots start hitting the back of the net.  And while Pat Kavanagh’s performance will rightfully be what is remembered from this game, moving forward it’s the fact that everyone on offense was a legitimate threat to score.  Coach Corrigan was wise to call the boys off and simply take the road win, but with 9 minutes left in the game and several man-up opportunities where the Irish were content to sit on the ball, there’s no reason to think the boys couldn’t have run the score into the 20s if they needed to.

Lastly, the man-up unit looked really sharp.  It’s nice to have an inside threat like Yorke to tie down the defense. The boys moved the ball well and had all sorts of shots available to them.  For the most part, the Irish were patient and found the high-percentage shots inside, but there were a lot of step-down opportunities that no one would have faulted them for taking.

Next Up

The offensive success and defensive recovery on the road will hopefully let the boys practice this week with a lot of confidence.  With the next two games being against #1 Duke, they will have their hands full!

The first of these is at noon this Saturday, at Arlotta Stadium, ESPNU.

#GoIrish