Notre Dame mens’ lacrosse (3-1,  #4/#4/#4) will face Virginia  (6-1, #9/#7/#8) on St. Patrick’s Day, 6:00 pm at Arlotta Stadium, ESPNU  Another day, another top-10 matchup.

The Fighting Irish have won the last five games in this series. The last two have been epic overtime wins that qualify as two of the most exciting finishes in all of lacrosse the past few seasons.

The 2016 game at home featured an epic ground ball scrum at the overtime faceoff, with John Sexton emerging with the ball and delivering it to Sergio Perkovic, who finished the game with an collossal blast from the top.  One of the great calls by former ESPNU play-by-play man and former Irish laxer Eamon McAnaney added to the excitement.


The 2017 game at Virginia’s Klockner Stadium featured a 70-minute lightning delay and an overtime when the clouds cleared.  In the extra session, defenseman Garrett Epple cleared the ball and passed to Ryder Garnsey for the winning low-to-high shot while being checked.  What followed was a marvelous celebration and a viral twitter video that our ND-Atl 2.0 must have watched 500 times.

The Opponent

The Cavaliers are led by 2nd year coach Lars Tiffany who brought with him an extremely fast paced offense.  Virginia advances the ball fast and takes risks in early offense.  They keep the defense on its heels and do not allow defenses to set up in their preferred sets.  Fast. Fast. Fast. They are deep and talented, and have recruited exceedingly well the past few years, as exemplified by the six freshmen and six sophomores on the first lines of this team.

Look for attackmen Michael Kraus (so.) and Ian Laviano (fr.), and midfielders Dox Aiken (so.) and Matt Moore (fr.), to lead the explosive offense.  Jared Connors at LSM is a goal scoring threat, and close defender Scott Hooper causes a lot of turnovers that initiate their offense.  Their FOGO is Justin Schwenk, a transfer from Monmouth.  He has been among the better faceoff men in the country winning 65% or so of his draws.  Alex Rode and Griffin Thompson have been splitting time in goal.

Virginia will be without defensemen Zach Ambrosino who is serving a suspension, and star midfielder Ryan Conrad who is injured.

The Challenge

Virginia plays an offensive style like no one else on the Irish’s schedule, and this presents all kinds of difficulty in preparation.  The Irish will need to know their defensive assignments well, and they must be prepared to play defense with players other than the usual defensive midfield compliment of Sexton/Hadley/Millican/Schantz/Gaiss/Phillips/Cassidy as Virginia’s pace may not make their preferred substitution pattern possible.  Further, their pace will likely stress the short offensive bench in use this year.  The offensive players will be expected to make way more runs than they have in any game this season.

The unique style of play involved will inspire us to look at a great many things.  The three issues of particular focus for us will be:

  1. Who will be added to offensive rotation:  We don’t see how the short bench will be possible this game with nearly 15 addition possessions likely as compared to a typical game.  Which of the young players will get added into the mix?
  2. Control of the middle:  It will be hard to do, but getting the D-midfield on the field to control the middle will be critical.  We are confident that Sexton and co. can control transition if the coaching staff can keep them on the field with the pace pressure of Virginia.
  3. Faceoffs:  Travisano had a great day against Baptiste last week, but he needs to keep the energy up against the very good Schwenk.  The Irish cannot afford to give this team extra possessions.

Odds and Ends

-We published this preview contemporaneously with the Virginia hoops clunker against noted lacrosse school UMBC.  If the loss translates to a malaise across all the Cavalier sports programs for a few days, we will not complain.

-Because no one ever shows enough defensive highlights, we’ll include the ground ball battle that preceded the 2016 Perkovic OT goal.  Sexton and Landis on the wings showed everyone ND wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

-We’re excited to read that ESPNU’s “Relaxin’ with Carc” segment will feature the team bagpiper and defenseman, Will Young.

-Irish -2, 19.5 o/u for those interested in that sort of thing.

#GoIrish