Our #7 Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s lacrosse (3-2) faltered at home against the #10 Ohio State Buckeyes (7-1), 9-10.

Five games into the season the boys find themselves in a search for identity.

The Plot

We are keeping the recap portion brief today so we can discuss the larger issues facing the team.

The game was played on a sunny but cool day before a huge Arlotta crowd. Ohio State opened the scoring, but the Irish quickly responded with goals from Maheras, Faison and McLane. Ohio State kept up an intense rate of shooting pressure and went on a 3-goal run of their own to put the Irish behind. It could have been worse for the boys but for a heroic performance by Thomas Ricciardelli in goal. Clutch goals late in the half from CKav and Seymour put the Irish back ahead at the break.

The second half started with a long stalemate.  Ohio State broke through and went on another 3-goal run, stopped only by Jake Taylor goal. The Buckeyes quickly responded with another to put the Irish behind 6-8.

Notre Dame started working things out on offense and responded with a strong 3-goal run with a second goal from CKav and two assertive goals by Angrick.  The boys had the lead, 9-8, with half a quarter left to play. Ohio State scored with about four minutes left to play, and the teams again returned to a long stalemate.

With time short, Notre Dame had the ball with options to proceed quickly or hold for a final shot.  Coming out of a time out, the team did not execute particularly well and then it was Ohio State with possession and the opportunity to close out the game.  Unfortunately, the Buckeyes scored with :07 seconds on the clock and handed the Irish their second loss of the season.

The Scoring

CKav and Angrick led Irish scorers with 2 goals each. McLane, Faison and Maheras had a goal and an assist each. Taylor and Seymour scored the other two Notre Dame goals. The scoresheet was again notable for the shortage of assists.

Thomas Ricciardelli had an incredible 20 saves, and Will Lynch led the faceoff unit winning 9 of 20 at the dot. Will Gallagher had his best statistical game with 3 ground balls and 2 caused turnovers.

The team had a strong day with ground balls, 30-22, a little bit of trouble with clears, 22 of 25, and could have handled the ball a bit better with 16 turnovers.

The Irish were well behind in generating shots (34-44) and shots on goal (21-30). This appears to be reflected in the middling efficiency of 25.7%.

Even with injuries to Buchner and Alacqua, Notre Dame did utilize its depth by getting 25 players on the field including four freshmen.

Our Pregame Questions

Again, a brief review of what our focus was before the game:

  1. Winning transition: There’s not a whole lot to discuss here. A transition game didn’t materialize.
  2. Offensive identity: We have a whole treatise on this below.
  3. Staying in control: On paper, the boys were on the bottom side of average taking care of the ball. The eyeball test seemed much worse, but that may be the result of the expectations created by the 2023 and 2024 teams. Either way, we do not think it is inappropriate to compare this squad to the standard for effort set by the preceding teams.\

The Search for Identity

The boys are now 5 games into the season, and while it hasn’t been the worst start, almost everyone expected better. The boys have had three games in a row that were nailbiters to the last minute, and we don’t accept that any of them should have been that close. From our perspective there are two main issues, a lack of playing identity and carelessness.

With how many players we had returned this year it feels weird to have an identity crisis. Even stranger, the defensive end of the field seems to be struggling less with finding identity and they lost the most. 

On offensive, the identity issues seem most impacted by a few things. Obviously, PKav is very hard to replace. While CKav is every bit as good of a player, he isn’t the same type of player as PKav but appears to be forced into that role. The reason we saw so much more success from him last year was because he was being played as the shoot first player he is. Now that PKav is gone, he is being forced into that “quarterback” role which isn’t a natural match to his playstyle. By no means is he a bad “quarterback” of the offense, he just isn’t as good at it as PKav. It is admittedly unfair for us to compare Chris to a Tewaaraton Award distributing attackman, but we aren’t the ones who but him in this position. To the question of identity, we have to ask why they are trying to find their identity in a copy of the 2024 offense.

On a similar note, with CKav being thrown into the PKav position, the team lost its CKav in that third attack spot. Through the pre-season and into the start of the season it looked like Pokorny would fit into that role with his crazy numbers in the scrimmages. However as the competition has gotten harder, his output declined fast. By no means is that decline in production his fault, he is only a freshman and we can’t expect him to put up consistent hat tricks when his first real experience in college are against some of the best defenders he will ever be guarded by. But because he has been struggling, the team is scrambling to fill that third attack spot through a rotation of players including Behrman and McLane, with McLane probably finding the most success. But the identity issue remains.  While these are all-american level talents, they do not appear comfortable trying to play the 2024-2025 PKav-CKav-Taylor attack system. This is readily apparent in the the scoresheet, with the team’s extreme difficulty in generating assists.

Just like the attack line, the midfield lines are yet to be solidified. Through these first 5 games we haven’t been able to pinpoint a consistent line of midfielders that goes in together. Add in the fact that McLane moved down to offense, and Faison and Jeffrey just came back from football, and we have ourselves what appears to be a mess to the outside observer. And much like the absence of PKav, the identity of the midfield has changed in the absence of a very intimidating stretch shooter like Dobson.  Without that piece, the geometry of the midfield is not the same and they will struggle if they look to run the same movements as 2024-2025.

But this midfield specifically, with its unusually strong depth,  is a good problem to have. All of the people that are being mixed together are great players. We just will need more consistency with who plays together to reach the full potential that we know they are capable of. Our worry is only that the team is still working out the details five games in.

The second identity issue is rooted in carelessness. This is honestly the opposite of what we have come to expect from a Notre Dame team. A critical reason why the 2023 and 2024 teams were so good was their attention to detail and how much they cared about the little things. The product on the field so far has not exhibited the same urgency, and this is troubling. We have been following all these boys since the moments they stepped on campus and know they are capable of better focus, and we know this because we have seen it. But we also know that attention to detail is not a switch that can be turned on and off.  It is a discipline that is energized with hard work over a long period of time. 

Honestly, we kind of understand how the team could have drifted from their predecessor’s standard. 75% of this team already has a nationally championship under their belt and 50% of the team has two. There is no revenge tour or expectations of a Covid Superteam roster. If they want to return to that championship weekend stage and add another ring to their list of achievements, they are going to need to find their hunger.  Something is going to need to change, and they are going to have to reignite that spark that was so bright the past two years. The serious worry is that they have not left themselves a lot of time to do this. Unlike lineup changes, this problem takes a lot of time to correct. The boys are going to need to weather the storm until their focus rises to the level necessary for a championship.

Coach Wellner enjoys posting motivational messages on X, and we recently read his post which reminds all of us that complaining without a solution is whining. He’s right and we get it, we are whining to some degree. We have every confidence in the coaching staff to make the lineup and style adjustments to help the team solve the first identity problem. The second is up to the players. Again, we have faith, but we also look for more urgency. We don’t think that is an unkind assessment and request. Like we have said in week’s past, we are hard on this team because their talent and ability demands high expectations.

Up Next

The Irish travel to Ann Arbor for a March 15 1:00 pm game against the Michigan Wolverines (4-3).  The game will be broadcast on the Big Ten Network. We won’t have a formal preview, but Michigan is a very talented team capable of causing the boys trouble, especially at home.  Like Notre Dame, Michigan is working out some identity issues that resulted in losses to North Carolina, Duke and Harvard. If our boys made positive steps towards finding their identity this week at practice and on their spring break trip, we’ll know by how much they put the Wolverines in a world of hurt.

GO IRISH!

ND-ATL 2.0